Geographies

Abstract

This chapter examines the fraught place of both nation and continent in the geographies of prestige created by literary prizes. It juxtaposes the unmistakably national Nigeria Prize for Literature (2005–present) with the London-based Brunel International African Poetry Prize (2013–2022) to show how prize administrators, judges, and poets mobilize distinct visions of excellence to reimagine the received geography of prestige. Its focal texts are The Sahara Testaments by Tade Ipadeola, awarded the Nigeria Prize for Literature in 2013; poems by Romeo Oriogun, the first openly queer Brunel Prize winner in 2017, and Zibusiso Mpofu, the final Brunel Prize winner in 2022; and Nomad by Oriogun, awarded the Nigeria Prize in 2022. While Ipadeola’s poetry shows the promise of a world literature constituted by intra-African and Afro-Asian connectivity without being premised on transcending national literary fields, Mpofu’s and Oriogun’s poems create worlds that redefine the sexual and gender norms that have implicitly regulated ideas of Africanness.