Momtaza Mehri (born 1995) is a Somali-British poet and essayist. She has won an

Eric Gregory Award The Eric Gregory Award is a literary award given annually by the Society of Authors for a collection by United Kingdom poets under the age of 30. The award was founded in 1960 by Dr. Eric Gregory to support and encourage young poets. Past winne ...

, the

Forward Prize The Forward Prizes for Poetry are major British awards for poetry, presented annually at a public ceremony in London. They were founded in 1992 by William Sieghart with the aim of celebrating excellence in poetry and increasing its audience. The ...

for Best First Collection, the

Manchester Poetry Prize The Manchester Poetry Prize is a literary award celebrating excellence in creative writing. It was launched by Carol Ann Duffy and The Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2008, and was the first phase of the annua ...

, and the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry.

Life

Momtaza Mehri is of Somali heritage and grew up in Kilburn, north-west London, and

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

in "the kind of household where if you're getting shouted at by your aunt to come downstairs, in one sentence she will use Somali, Arabic, Italian and English." She lives in Kilburn, and has trained as a biomedical scientist.

Literary career

Mehri began writing for publication in 2014. In 2016–2017, she was featured in ''

DAZED ''Dazed'' (''Dazed & Confused'' until February 2014) is a quarterly British lifestyle magazine founded in 1991. It covers music, fashion, film, art, and literature. ''Dazed'' is published by Dazed Media, an independent media group known for produ ...

'', ''

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Poetry Society of America Poetry (from the Greek word '' poiesis'', "making") is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings. Any partic ...

; ''Mask Magazine'', ''SAND Journal'', and ''Frontier Poetry''. She became a member of The Complete Works mentoring programme and went on to win the Out-Spoken Page Poetry Prize (2017) and to publish a pamphlet, ''Sugah. Lump. Prayer'' with Akashic Books. In 2018, Mehri won third prize in the

National Poetry Competition The National Poetry Competition is an annual poetry prize established in 1978 in the United Kingdom. It is run by UK-based The Poetry Society and accepts entries from all over the world, with over 10,000 poems being submitted to the competition ...

and was named the Young People's Laureate for London. In 2019, Mehri won the

and published a pamphet, ''Doing the Most with the Least'', with Goldsmiths Press. In 2022, Mehri was shortlisted for the Observer/Antony Burgess Prize for Arts journalism. Mehri's collection ''Bad Diaspora Poems'' was published in 2023. It won an

and the

for Best First Collection. It was also shortlisted for the 2023 Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award. In 2024, the book was awarded the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. Mehri's poem “Brief Dialogue Between the Self-declared East African Micronations of Regent Park Estate (Toronto) & Regent’s Park Estate (London)” was selected for National Poetry Day 2023. In the same year, Mehri took up the position of Jessica Bardsley Poet in Residence at

Homerton College Homerton College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Its first premises were acquired in Homerton, London in 1768, by an informal gathering of English Dissenters, Protestant dissente ...

Cambridge.

Publications

* 2017: ''Sugah. Lump. Prayer'' (pamphlet), Akashic Books. * 2017: Contributor to ''Ten: Poets of the New Generation'', edited by Karen McCarthy Woolf, Bloodaxe Books * 2019: ''Doing the Most with the Least'' (pamphlet), Goldsmiths Press * 2023: ''Bad Diaspora Poems'', Random House

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mehri, Momtaza 1994 births Living people 21st-century British poets 21st-century British women writers Black British women writers Black British writers English people of Somali descent People from Kilburn, London Poets from London Somalian emigrants to the United Kingdom Writers from Birmingham, West Midlands Writers from the London Borough of Brent