uHlanga is proud to announce that Maneo Mohale has won the 2020 Glenna Luschei Award for African Poetry for their debut collection Everything Is A Deathly Flower.

The Glenna Luschei Award, named after the U.S. American philanthopist and administered by the African Poetry Book Fund at the University of Nebraska, is a prize of US$1000 awarded annually for an outstanding book of poetry by an African writer. The 2020 award, announced on 4 June 2021, was judged by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, who said about Mohale’s collection:

“What is poetry but a manifesto of love, an invitation and an outpouring of struggle? As we roam the pages of the collection, we witness the love of land, of nature, of humanity; one is shown pain turned into raw beauty. The collection stood out because of the author’s commitment to the image, to the story and to language itself.
A gifted poet will, in this world of distractions, compel the reader to listen deeper, to filter out the verbosity of the market and the barrage of restrictions that humans place upon language, to find the voice of memory, a sound so close to silence.”

We are very grateful to the African Poetry Book Fund for this honour, which is the second Glenna Luschei Award won for a book published by uHlanga, the first being Collective Amnesia by Koleka Putuma, who won the 2017 award. Mohale’s collection was edited by fellow uHlanga poet Francine Simon, and we also thank her for her contribution to the project.

In addition, this accolade caps off a year of great success for uHlanga, completing a clean sweep of the three most prominent poetry awards that our books were eligible for during the last calendar year. Mohale joins fellow award-winners Saaleha Idrees Bamjee, winner of the 2020 Ingrid Jonker Prize for Zikr, and Musawenkosi Khanyile, winner of the 2020 South African Literary Award for Poetry for All the Places. Khanyile and Mohale were the two other finalists, in addition to Bamjee, for the Ingrid Jonker Prize.

Everything Is A Deathly Flower is available in all good bookstores in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, and everywhere else through the African Books Collective.

And – lastly – congratulations to Maneo!