The Poetry Project is pleased to share that judge Sawako Nakayasu has selected Achille Tenkiang as the winner of the 2026 Lisa Brannan Prize. Regarding Achille's winning poem, "After Bhanu Kapil’s 12 Questions", Nakayasu had the following to share:

The speaker arrives thusly: “Through the soft catastrophe of being loved by people who wanted safety for me more than they wanted truth.” The terse rhythms of this long and achingly stunning poem bring the complexity of this and other hard truths into the light—we consider the institutions of silence, the many textures and temporalities of grief. Dirt as archive. It responds to Bhanu Kapil’s classic work, The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers, with renewed intensity, across Africa and the US, urgently demanding more capaciousness on behalf of masculinity, of relationships, and of love itself.

"After Bhanu Kapil's 12 Questions" will be published in an upcoming issue of the Poetry Project Newsletter. Congratulations, Achille!