The 2024 Sprinng Annual Poetry Contest Longlist
The Sprinng community congratulates the writers longlisted for our 2024 Annual Poetry Contest. While we cannot wait to announce the shortlisted writers on August 10 and the winners on August 15, we hope you enjoy reading their brilliant submissions!
Finding Faith within the Rubble by Adedokun Ibrahim
In The Aftermath of A War by Chinecherem Enujioke
All Things Are Deep By Chinuzoke Chinuwa
Caged Memoir by Emmanuella Koori
A Song Inside My Belly by Mayowa Oladeji
Migrant by Michael Emerald Oladosu
War is a Plaything for Broken Men by Michael Bestman
Onitsha: The Town of Bustles by Miracle Nwegbo
Three-Legged Dreams by Victor Achi
Finding Metaphors for Boys Littered in My Country By Victor Obukata
READ THEIR PIECES BELOW
Finding Faith within the Rubble by Adedokun Ibrahim
BBC: Just getting to the end of the day and surviving the night
must feel like a miracle in the Gaza Strip.
...........
My father often sits before the TV
where news repeats until it's no longer new to see.
You've witnessed it too, time and time again
the headline echoing till it fades, a silent sigh.
Hasbuna-llaahu wa ni'mal-wakeel
is a soothing lullaby here.
& the land I come from kneels in silence, tears uncried, we still feel the sorrow’s grip.
Still, the god I worship pulls me through every trial, and after, there will be ease.
In The Aftermath of A War By Chinecherem Enujioke
All the girls are learning to haggle prices,
the boys are playing war start in the absence of sirens.
The tales are lost wounds, the shells smeared into memory
and memory is an unfinished story.
The women tie the babies too close to their backs
the men yell with kolanut between their teeth—
the babies are choking. & there it goes
libations and incantations. In the aftermath
of a war, providence is like Damocles’ sword,
there may be a minefield beneath for every asylum your feet find.
All Things Are Deep By Chinuzoke Chinuwa
The bedlamp turned his necklace
blue as he sank his sheathed sword into
the abyss of my flesh.
Now I know all things are shaped
like my preceding sadness—they are
deep on the inside.
If it were not so, would he have lain
on my chest for that long and asked
if it was good?
Caged Memoir By Emmanuella Koori
Here, we carry fears in our tongue & we dare not unclutter it.
We are aware of the disappearance of our treasures & the man
who told us servitude lives with us. Here, every news carries
more sadness than bliss. On my Facebook wall, I posted:
you are all welcome to this renewed shege, & meta banned me.
I presumed it is the mandate given to him. This tongue twisted
regime is not what I desired, not what my father voted for.
My father is working but returns home with zero wage, & hunger––
a free agent travels through my stomach to proclaim war. I have
become a broken bone while praying silently for an end to this agony.
A Song Inside My Belly by Mayowa Oladeji
There is no courage in oppressing the oppressed. - Farooq Kperogi
each day is an unfurling of God’s eyes
a cigarette lines my lips – its smoke dancing to
the humming of a waking city
when you try, they say your love is too raw
these streets gawk at boys, girls, & others;
blooming into flowers
everything is falling, our sadness quakes the earth
there is a hole eating my heart, dug by the face of terror
we are always running. to stop is to find, happiness.
Migrant by Michael Emerald Oladosu
You performed
the miracle of
the red sea
to find land,
but the waves
that brought
you here
say the shore
is not your home.
War is a Plaything for Broken Men by Michael Bestman
do little children sleep
knowing a shrapnel once silenced
their father's snore forever,
the same night their mother turned into rubble?
this dust like 9/11, like Okigbo's last Biafran puff in '67
holds the memory of a thousand, maybe a million, goodbyes.
in Gaza & elsewhere,
where war is a plaything for broken men,
birds fly without wings
& roost on a roof that once held a family tightly.
Onitsha: The Town of Bustles by Miracle Nwegbo
Loud voices from earth’s corners resound,
As retailers call at passers-by.
A trade as though—
Was a voice-war with a foe.
Business magnates on their wits,
Sweating children hawking their means,
Buyers on their hasty feet,
Bus conductors on their vivacious tips,
With every motion happening at light’s speed.
This ancient town is only but a town of bustles.
Three-Legged Dreams by Victor Achi
Mama's stew, scent of kerosene and hope,
simmering on a three-legged stove.
Lagos sun, hot like a slap, but her smile,
sweeter than suya by the roadside.
She whispers dreams in my ear, warrior queen,
fighting off the hustlers and the heat.
But the street, it has teeth, sharp and hungry,
and innocence is a currency quickly spent.
Her love, a fragile shield against this concrete jungle,
where even the moon begs for change.
Finding Metaphors for Boys Littered in My Country By Victor Obukata
Here, the metaphor for boys is your environment.
Say, shadows, say water, or like the boys in Cross River, sailors.
Call a boy according to the fragments of your environment in his traits.
As long as trouble does not trail your word to his body, it is a good metaphor.
My uncle calls me Ame (water), the trait in us.
But we've been taught that water flows till it is barricaded by bottles.
My brothers’ bodies flowed till my country bottled them.
I am Ame & if this country fetches me,
I will be a different metaphor.
Congratulations, and keep on Springing!
