Unveiling the 2014 Babishai Niwe Poetry Award

Rashida Namulondo (R), last year’s BNPA winner, recites her poem as BNPA founder Beverley Nambozo looks on. Courtesy PHOTO

What you need to know:

The award ceremony, to be held in Kampala is slated to take place between September and October

Enthusiastic, emotionally rewarding, aesthetically appealing and a roller coaster of a journey for the judges, is how Babishai Niwe Poetry Award (BNPA) founder, Beverley Nambozo describes this year’s edition of the BNPA.

Nambozo this week released a short list of 10 poems for this year’s edition of the coveted award, formerly called Beverley Nambozo Poetry Award that spread its wings beyond Uganda and accepted, for the first time, male entrants.
She said: “2014 was the right time to extend the award from Uganda to Africa because Ugandans needed a higher competitive edge and there was a very large gap on the continent for poetry awards, organised by poetry organisations on the continent. BNPA filled that gap.”

There were close to 1,500 submissions from 13 countries including Botswana, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
There were also submissions from Africans living in Asia, Europe and North America. The judges, Nambozo revealed in an email, were also drawn, “from a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, emotions and expertise”.
“They all commented that selecting the long-list and then the shortlist was so distressful because of the quality of submissions. They could hardly define the brutality it took to eliminate some very fine poems,” she added.
The award ceremony, to be held in Kampala is slated to take place between September and October.