Al-Amoudi wins White Review Poet’s Prize

Fahad Al-Amoudi has won this year’s £2,500 the White Review Poet’s Prize 2022 for his “distinctly accomplished and mature” poetic vision. 

This year’s judges, poets Rachel Long, author of My Darling from the Lions (Pan Macmillan) and founder of the Octavia Poetry Collective for Women of Colour, Nisha Ramayya, author of States of the Body Produced by Love (Ignota Books), and Jay Gao, author of Imperium (Carcanet Press) and a White Review contributing editor chose Al-Amoudi’s portfolio from a shortlist of eight. 

The judges said: “From the very first image in Fahad Al-Amoudi’s portfolio, there was a poetic vision that felt distinctly accomplished and mature. We were excited by the mixture of tradition, fabulation, allusion and anecdote, held by Al-Amoudi’s poetic variations and swept away by the generosity of his command. 

“Through Al-Amoudi’s ability to weave together tender storytelling and lyric surprise, darkness and lightness, these poems manage to craft an intense richness of the poetic world under close and perceptive examination.”

Nina Reljić was also commended for her “complex and playful” poetry. Winner Al-Amoudi has been awarded £2,500, editorial feedback and publication of his winning portfolio in a print edition of the White Review. 

Martha Sprackland, poetry editor at prize sponsor Cheerio, said of his poems: “Though rooted in the specificity of family and place, [they] come with the trappings of myth. They are restless and talkative, alert always to the minute details of the world – the movements of insects, the intricacy of jewellery, the bloom and spoil of fruit – and they take great pleasure in the play of sound and language. From a particularly strong field of entries, Al-Amoudi’s portfolio is an impressive winner.”

Last year’s prize was won by Kandace Siobhan Walker, whose portfolio is published in White Review issue 32, out now.