Poetry

Wasafiri is proud to publish the shortlisted works of the 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. These poems, essays, and short stories detail a range of emotions and experiences, produced by skilled emerging writers from all over the globe.

Andrés N Ordorica delivers an electric reading of 'In the Name of the Joto, Mariposa, y Maricón' — a joyful prayer and blessing to queer Latinx identity, freedom, and culture.

[caption id="attachment_22623" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Gulls Flee Sheerwater[/caption] FOREST   … He claimed to have invented the night. This was not Romanticism, which was mainly a question … of translation. Yet she was often mute during their carriage rides.

over        head     billowing …      headscarf       white as surf …                        like    a hug  … billowing like a curtain  …                   or a flag    hanging    like  …             a noose        a mask    like  …        a blanket     a sheet …                   billowing …      …

In honour of Caleb Femi's  Poor winning the 2021 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection, Wasafiri is proud to share his poem 'Fisher of Men', which was shortlisted for the 2017 Wasafiri New Writing Prize.

L-R: Caleb Femi, alice hiller, Holly Pester, Ralf Webb and Cynthia Miller … Part of the prestigious Forward Prizes for Poetry, the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection rewards ingenuity, skill, and boldness.

  … A weed:

* … Click here to download a screenreader accessible version of this poem. King Llanza (he/they) is from the Philippines. His poems have appeared in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Sledgehammer Lit, bind collective, amberflora, Voice & Verse, SAND and Cordite Poetry Review, among others.

* … Click here to download a screenreader friendly version of this poem. alice hiller’s Forward Prize shortlisted debut, bird of winter , responds to being groomed and sexually abused in childhood, and finding healing beyond this crime.

i. Muladhara … If we could reconstruct the temple of our bodies, we all know what we’d change first. A little demolition work in the zone of belly, some gutting around hips and bum, a coat of paint after weather-stripping the face.

If you ask me about water, this is the water I think about. The glow of myriad colours on the lake at night. Rickshaw drivers practising their English consonants and vowels with tourists as they pedal past the hutongs, earning five yuan each time—not even a pound.

t here’s  an art to arranging    … bones, laying them together     … by way of size, shape, density,   … to form a human  body;   … y ou need to be careful where the    … sternum crosses the chest or   … the rib cage cloisters sit…

Codex 10  … Rumi said Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely … is made for the eye of one who sees.  In 1973, the same year … my mother met my father, Steven Speilberg had just wrapped  … on American Graffiti.

I am shaped by borders. I was born with the privilege to cross these borders freely; I was born with light skin and a New Zealand passport. I am shaped by colonial islands. Aotearoa New Zealand on my dad’s side, and Sabah, Malaysia, on my mum’s side – formerly known as British North Borneo.

One of the many myths perpetuated by British colonial governments and its systems of propaganda is that Empire existed not for the economic benefit of Britain but to civilise, Educate (and Christianise) primitive peoples of the earth.

a crowd gathers around an empty frame … suspended from the ceiling / some see the … face of their saviour / others find … themselves lost in a tunnel / those at the … front with their chequebooks at the ready … have the audacity to call it Art / they’re all … correct / but they’re also wrong to…

'I think it be would be Whitney Houston does a grime inflected album, with special features from Rhianna, Stormzy, Skepta, David Bowie. Album artwork from either Tracey Emin or Carrie Mae Weems – maybe an artwork each side.

Here, take my brain, each last lobe … one hundred billion empty neurons … firing, its shocks so blunt, my thoughts disrobed; … bruises and wounds unhidden.

London is now three roundabouts. Each connected, each the same. All roads only lead to or from these roundabouts. No escape. But they’re big. Really big. London is now England and maybe even Europe. No one has settled anywhere, we all just keep driving, searching for somewhere else.

1.1.1 cousin wants the whakapapa … 1.1.2 cousin played reps back in the day … 1.1.3 cousin bringing the leftovers … 1.2.1 cousin baby four on the way … 1.2.2 cousin going up to the tangi … 1.2.3 cousin three jobs pretty busy … 1.2.4 cousin another month of curfew … 1.2.

My father hid in the basement … painting uniforms on metal soldiers, his finger tips … rough as bark. I climbed to the top of the cherry tree … to spy on the neighbors while I chewed on pits. Painting uniforms on metal soldiers, his finger tips … cracked from the paint thinner.

Arab Australian poet Omar Sakr writes a love poem in praise of the 'confetti endearment': 'habibi'.

They said history was over. I wanted them … to be wrong. I wanted things to turn. I wanted a world I could find … beautiful on its own, without any … particular good news. I’d never had … a truth that could hold me.

They have walked all night … through the desert, this couple: José y Maria … and the baby. duermete mi niño … duermete por favor. Por favor. Their English isn’t great – they’ve got a bit. Yes sir. No sir. Thank you sir. They’ve got that down pat.