NOME EMEKA PATRICK
POET OF THE YEAR — RUNNER-UP
What if I told you that I took my gods to a crossroads
& willed them to chorus
to the music of my own doubts?
I am not a simple man. I have the logic of fireflies.
In my poems, I am trying to touch the divine, to touch God. However, I use the lowercase “god” to mean obsessions, addictions, infatuations, etc. This, god vs God topic, also boils down to how written language signals the differentiations that oral language might be unable to effectively capture.
Nome Emeka Patrick is a Nigerian, and Cave Canem fellow. His works have been published or are forthcoming in POETRY, AGNI, The Journal, Narrative, TriQuarterly, Waxwing, Hayden's Ferry Review, Poet Lore, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. A Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and Pushcart prize nominee, he emerged third place in the Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets, 2020. His manuscript 'We Need New Moses. Or New Luther King' was a finalist for the 2019 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. His chapbook, Voyaging, was selected for New Generation African Poet—African Poetry Book Fund (2024) by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani. He has an MFA from Brown University and is currently a PhD student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is the poetry editor at Agbowo.