Kemi Alabi, a Chicago-based writer and activist has bagged the First Book Award from the Academy of American Poets. The cultural strategy director of Forward Together, was chosen by the renowned poet Claudia Rankine for the honour.
Alabi will receive a $5,000 reward as well as an all-expenses-paid residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbria, Italy for six-week. The poet’s work titled Against Heaven is scheduled for publication in 2022. According to report, the Academy of American Poets will also buy and distribute thousands of copies of Against Heaven.
Kemi Alabi earlier shared the poem published in The Atlantic on the micro-blogging site Twitter.
"New poem in @TheAtlantic —and I love that it came out on a Sunday morning. Folded hands," the tweet read.
On Thursday, Rankine said in a statement “Against All Heaven” was a skilled and multi-layered exploration of “black queer subjectivity.”
“At once sonic and disruptive, these poems pull together everything in a world where nothing is sacred,” Claudia Rankine said.
“In this energetic and brilliant debut, the thrust of the lyric dislodges all that is stuck and stagnant, creating new possibilities for utterance,” she added.
Alabi is a poet and cultural strategy director of Forward Together, which works in support of communities to battle marginalization based “on race, sexuality, and gender.”
Previously, American poets Nicole Cooley and Jenny Xie received the First Book Award, in the year 1975.
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