CHIWENITE onyekwelu
Chiwenite Onyekwelu’s debut poetry chapbook, EXILED, will be published in 2024 by Red Bird Chapbooks. His poems appear in Adroit Journal, Frontier, Cincinnati Review, Palette, Hudson Review, Lolwe, Chestnut Review, Mizna, and elsewhere. He won the Hudson Review Inaugural Frederick Morgan Poetry Prize, 2020 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Prize 2023.
“Beg him to quiver even if for once. However, for now, let us pretend that martyrdom is only a synonym for strength. Let us pretend that this moment, photographed, will not hack them open like a cake.”
“A few years ago when I first developed interest in poetry, I struggled to find what to read. The poems I found seemed somewhat complex, maybe because I was new to the genre, and it did not help that I had been in the sciences for most of my life. So, eventually, when I began writing poems myself, I knew the exact kind of poems I wanted to write: Simple; easy to read.”
November 19, 2023