2025 Poetry Challenge Winners
Grace Elizabeth Hawthorne
Exhibit: East - A rhapsody on Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’
Monica Minott
Becoming a Creole Tree
Monica is the author of three collections of poetry, Kumina Queen 2016, Zion Roses, 2021, and Wandering Spirits of Exile, 2025. She was awarded first prize in the inaugural Small Axe poetry competition and her poems have been published in several anthologies. She received two awards in the Jamaica National Book Development Council’s annual literary competitions. Minott’s “BBC News on The Verandah” made the short list for the 2022 prestigious Bridport Prize in the United Kingdom. Also in 2022 Zion Roses was longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize. More recently Minott completed her PhD -poetry and her poem “Basquiat’s Delusion” from her latest collection, Wandering Spirits of Exile, published in `June 2025, was highly commended by the Forward Prizes and will appear in the Forward Book of Poetry, 2026.
Lima Sadiyah
limbs of one
Lima was born in London, where she now works in finance. Of Pakistani-Kashmiri heritage, she writes to explore identity, memory, and the stories that inform how we see ourselves and others. She often draws inspiration from her home in East London and the people and experiences that have shaped her life there. Coming from an environment that is frequently misrepresented in mainstream media, her poem is an attempt to reclaim a place for her community in the global conversation.