Rasaq Malik Gbolahan Selected as Finalist for 2026 Montreal International Poetry Prize

The Montreal International Poetry Prize is one of the largest poetry awards globally, offering CA$20,000 to the winner for a single poem of 40 lines or fewer. Open to poets from around the world, the competition employs an anonymous judging process, ensuring that jurors evaluate the poems without knowledge of the authors’ identities. The final judge, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natalie Diaz, will also assess the poems without seeing the poets' names.

The preliminary jury consists of poets and critics from various countries, including South Africa, India, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada. All finalists' poems will be published in The Montreal Poetry Prize Anthology, and they will take part in the prize’s Fluid Vessels online reading series.

Gbolahan, who is a poet, translator, editor, and essayist, graduated from the University of Ibadan. He is the founding editor-in-chief of Agbowó and co-founder of Àtẹ́lẹwọ́, a digital journal focusing on literature in the Yorùbá language. He co-edits the upcoming anthology African Urban Echoes, which compiles poems about African cities. His works include the chapbooks No Home in This Land (2018) and The Other Names of Grief (2021). His debut full-length collection, The Origin of Wounds, won the 2024 Anhinga Prize for Poetry and delves into themes of war, displacement, and memory.

His poetry has appeared in notable publications such as POETRY, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, and Prairie Schooner. Gbolahan was a finalist for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize in 2017 and the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets in 2018. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

With "Suitcase," Gbolahan now joins the ranks of poets vying for the $20,000 prize, further cementing his international recognition as a poet engaged with themes of grief and the Nigerian experience.