This week in our poetry news round up we look at the death of the pioneering spoken word artist Black Ice and the newly announced poetry longlist for the 2026 Nigeria Prize for Literature.
Spoken Word Pioneer Black Ice Dies Aged 54
Photo by Frank Micelotta/Getty Images
Black Ice, the Philadelphia poet who did as much as anyone to carry spoken word from the back rooms of open mic nights onto television and Broadway, has died at the age of 54. Born Lamar Manson, he died on Wednesday July 22nd surrounded by loved ones, with his family confirming the news the following day. No cause of death has been made public.
Black Ice built his reputation the hard way, on Philadelphia stages, and arrived fully formed when HBO’s Def Poetry Jam came calling. He appeared across five consecutive seasons of the show, becoming one of its most recognizable faces, and carried that same booming delivery into the Broadway production, Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, which won a Tony Award in 2003. He also made history as the first poet ever signed to Def Jam Records, a moment that said a great deal about where performance poetry stood at the turn of the century, and about how seriously the music industry had begun to take it. His 2006 debut album, The Death of Willie Lynch, brought his politically charged work to a much wider audience, and he went on to collaborate with the likes of Musiq Soulchild and DJ Jazzy Jeff. In later years he spent a great deal of his time teaching, encouraging young writers to put their own realities on the page.
His subject matter was race, history, identity and survival, delivered with a stage presence that could hold a room with nothing more than language and breath. Tributes came in quickly from across both the poetry and hip hop worlds. Russell Simmons, who founded Def Poetry, said that Black Ice “bridged the gap between Hip-Hop and poetry” and credited him with helping open the door to twelve years of poetry programming. The singer Jill Scott, a fellow Philadelphian, spoke of a friendship spanning three decades, while the poets Toni Blackman and Jessica Care Moore also paid tribute. He belongs to a line of American performance poets that runs back through Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou, and it is a line that is noticeably poorer this week.
Nigeria Prize for Literature Announces Poetry Longlist
The Advisory Board of the Nigeria Prize for Literature announced its 2026 longlist on Thursday July 23rd, naming eleven poetry collections chosen from 223 entries. Sponsored by NLNG and now in its 22nd year, the prize carries a cash award of $100,000, which makes it one of the most generous literary awards anywhere in the world. It rotates annually across four genres – prose fiction, poetry, drama and children’s literature – and 2026 is poetry’s turn.
The longlisted titles are Adult Love by Tanure Ojaide, Bakandimiya by Saddiq Dzukogi, Black Passport by Paul Akpomuje, 2000 Blacks by Ajibola Tolase, Ceremony for The Nameless by Theresa Lola, Corpus: Animistic Verses by Ayo Oyeku, Floral’s Love Colony by Tares Oburumu, The Origin of Wounds by Malik Gbolahan, The Years of Blood by Adebayo Agarau, Unbind Me Now by James Ugwu Eze and Why Does God Need a Gun by Ogaga Ifowodo.
Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, who chairs the Advisory Board, said the collections share a common concern with the endurance of individuals and communities in the face of violence, oppression and social fragmentation, while revisiting history and questioning the narratives that have been handed down. She praised the range of technique on display, from densely allegorical and elegiac writing to work drawing heavily on folklore and oral tradition. UK readers may recognize Theresa Lola, the British-Nigerian poet who served as Young People’s Laureate for London. A shortlist of three follows in August, with the winner expected to be announced in October.
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