Theresa Lola has been named joint winner of the 2025 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry!

Her collection Ceremony for the Nameless (Penguin Books) was announced as joint winner on Tuesday, October 28, by Arrowsmith Press.

The Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry is offered annually to a book of poetry by a non-US citizen published anywhere in the world. It honors the work of St. Lucian Nobel Prize poet Derek Walcott. Judging the prize this year was Jamaican poet Ishion Hutchinson.

Lola was shortlisted alongside fourteen other poets, including fellow Nigerian poets Hussain Ahmed for Blue Exodus(Orison Books) and Ajibola Tolase for 2000 Blacks (University of Pittsburgh Press). The three Nigerian poets represented a strong showing for contemporary Nigerian poetry on the international stage.

Lola’s joint winner is Mary O’Malley for her collection The Shark Nursery (Carcanet, 2024). They will split the $2,000 prize between them.

Ceremony for the Nameless is Lola’s second full-length poetry collection. Drawing from Yoruba naming ceremonies that welcome newborn babies into the world through songs of praise, the collection explores the act of naming and its role in shaping identity, aspirations, and belonging. Lola examines her dual Nigerian-British identity, traces the lineages of names, and asks why some deserve to be named while others are rendered invisible. The poems navigate the diasporic experience as it weaves through family life, history, and memory, exploring how our journeys through life might require casting off old expectations or bring us back, unexpectedly, to where we first began. The Sunday Times Style Magazine has described Lola as among “the ranks of an exciting new wave of young female bards who are widening the appeal of poetry for a new generation.”

Congratulations to Theresa Lola and Mary O’Malley!