The Unserious Collective is pleased to announce the return of our annual fellowship after a one-year break. The Unserious Collective Fellowship recognizes the best poetry written by emerging Nigerian poets today. We are currently accepting entries from emerging Nigerian poets from April 1st to June 30th. Four fellows shall win a cash prize #600,000 in total or 150,000 each.
In the light of the outstanding talent, skill, and commitment of emerging Nigerian poets and the limited resources available, we hope that this fellowship will offer some encouragement. We are fully committed to increasing the fellowship prize every year and are endlessly working on various programming and initiatives to further support Nigerian poetry. We hope that you will consider submitting.
In line with our vision of rejecting the rigid architectures of modern letters, we seek poems that are transgressive, fierce, unhinged, playful, and memorable. If this describes your work, send it our way.
Submission Guidelines For the Unserious Collective Poetry Fellowship
The Fellowship does not prefer any theme, style, or approach. Just quality writing that is bold and exciting. In other words, we want your proudest works.
The fellowship is open to only Nigerian poets, called Emerging, or whose art/poetic endeavors can be described as such.
Our STRICT definition of an emerging poet is that entrants must NOT have published a full-length poetry book. This does NOT include self-published books.
Submit up to TEN (previously published or unpublished) pages of poems in a .doc or .docx file. You may submit both published and unpublished work, but NOT only PUBLISHED WORK.
Single-spaced. Font: 12, Garamond or Times New Roman. Each page must be paginated.
The submission title should read, “UCPS 2026,” and should be submitted on our new submission portal here.
Entries submitted via email will not be read.
No identifying information (including publication history of individual poems) should be in the file. Therefore, the file name and the body of the document must NOT contain your name.
The 4 Fellows will have their entries published in a microchapbook. We shall communicate with the fellows to indicate the publication history of previously published poems in the chapbook.
We will announce a long list, a short list, and our final list of 4 winners in August.