Nigerian poet Rasaq Malik Gbolahan is a finalist for the 2026 Montreal International Poetry Prize, shortlisted for his poem “Suitcase.” He is the only African poet among the 20 finalists currently listed by the prize.

The Montreal International Poetry Prize is one of the world’s largest prizes for a single poem, awarding CA$20,000 to the winner. The biennial competition is open to poets worldwide and asks for a single original poem of 40 lines or fewer. Its judging process is deliberately anonymous: poems are distributed to jurors without the authors’ names or identifying information, and the final judge likewise selects the winner without seeing the poets’ identities.

This year’s final judge is Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natalie Diaz, author of Postcolonial Love Poem. The preliminary jury includes poets and critics from several countries, including South Africa, India, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada. All poems on the final list will be published in The Montreal Poetry Prize Anthology, while finalists also participate in the prize’s Fluid Vessels online reading series.

Gbolahan is a Nigerian poet, translator, editor, and essayist. A graduate of the University of Ibadan, he is the founding editor-in-chief of Agbowó and a co-founder of Àtẹ́lẹwọ́, a digital journal devoted to publishing literary work in the Yorùbá language. He is also the co-editor of African Urban Echoes, a 2025 anthology bringing together poems about African cities and their complex social and cultural landscapes. He is the author of the poetry chapbooks No Home in This Land (2018) and The Other Names of Grief (2021). His first full-length collection, The Origin of Wounds, won the 2024 Anhinga Prize for Poetry. The collection explores war, displacement, grief, memory, and the search for sanctuary, drawing connections between personal loss and larger histories of violence.

His work has appeared in publications including POETRY, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, and Rattle. He was shortlisted for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize in 2017 and was a finalist for the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets in 2018. He is currently a PhD student at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

“Suitcase” now places Gbolahan among a group of poets whose work will be considered by Diaz for the $20,000 prize. Whatever the outcome, his inclusion marks another significant international recognition for a poet whose work has remained deeply engaged with grief, displacement, history, and the Nigerian experience.

Congratulations, Rasaq. We’re rooting for you!