Longlisted Poem: “We Marry the Thunder to Delay the Rain”
AGBEYE OBURUMU, known as Agbeyetalks, is a multiple award-winning poet and multidisciplinary creative. He is the most recent recipient of the KEEP Prize for Performance Poetry in Nigeria. A lifetime member of academic societies in Japan and India, he also holds fellowships with the African Liberty Writing Fellowship and the International Organisation for Academic and Scientific Development. An alumnus of the 2025 Building Bridges Project for Creatives, his work appears in Brittle Paper, Spillwords, and Aké Review. He has been featured in US Times, Punch, The Nation, Vanguard, and Kaftan TV. His latest project, a 36-track spoken-word poetry album titled “Mine Too Counts”.