Poets Bright Aboagye, Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri, Edinam Denoo, and Alhassan Mohammed have been named among the 30 longlisted writers for the inaugural 2026 cycle of the Alhaji Arole Agarawu African Poetry Prize.
Aboagye makes the longlist with Bright Poems of Lyric, while Abukuri with Decolonized Ear. Denoo's selection is Bonu Bonu Kpoo and Mohammed's A Catalog of Soft Ruins join the longlist.
The four poets account for four of the 30 longlisted manuscripts, making Ghana one of the countries represented in the inaugural prize alongside Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, among others.
The prize organisers said they received 356 manuscript suites from poets writing across the African continent and its global diaspora. The submissions, comprising thousands of individual poems, were described as reflecting a broad poetic landscape shaped by oral traditions, inherited grief, migration, urban life, communal memory and intimate experiences of joy.
For the Ghanaian poets, the longlisting offers a significant platform at the launch of a prize explicitly dedicated to African poetry and its diasporic traditions. Their inclusion also highlights the continuing breadth of Ghana's contemporary poetry.