As an undergraduate student at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Iheoma Uzomba used to bring drafts of her work to The Writer’s Community, a small circle of writers who met on Saturday afternoons at the Faculty of Arts quadrangle. The feedback she received pushed her to take her craft seriously, to grow. She continued developing her skills when she moved to Canada to study for an MA in English at the University of Calgary, Alberta. This week, she was announced as the 2025 winner of the Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award for Poetry.
Founded in 1927 at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Prairie Schooner has long been one of the most respected literary journals in the United States. Its Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award for Poetry is supported by the Glenna Luschei Fund, and, at $1,500, is the magazine’s top honor. Last year’s winner was Sharon Olds. Other past winners include Laura Da’ and Kim Coleman Foote.
Uzomba won for her three poems in the magazine’s Fall 2024 issue: “Field Notes at Dusk,” “The Ideal Self-Portrait Poem,” and “Ache Is a Feminine Word.” Her verses are striking. “Field Notes at Dusk” poem moves between the natural world and memory, each a reflection for anguish and resistance. It begins:
Here on this field,
there are two things left to row the mind’s boat—
anguish & what becomes of anguish.
“The Ideal Self-Portrait Poem” wrings imagery and metaphor out of Pidgin:
the wire wey dem use hol’ my brain
de touch sometimes … the storm wey de rush for my vein go reach
to kwench hell faya.
And in “Ache Is a Feminine Word,” she turns inheritance into ache and psalm:
My mother pushed & pushed the storm in her womb into a newborn.
I was born drenched, weather-beaten, & she,
unable to be born anew, drowned in my place.
To be womaned is to learn of new aches.
Her other poems have appeared in Rattle, Palette Poetry, The Shore Poetry, The Rising Phoenix Review, Ake Review, and Isele. In 2022, she was winner of the Lagos-London Poetry Contest, and has been a Poetry Translation Center (UK) UNDERTOW Fellow. A spoken word artiste, she holds a BA in English and Literary Studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where she was editor of the school journal The Muse.
But readers of Open Country Mag have long known about Uzomba’s talents. As a staff writer, she reviews and profiles notable poets, including JK Anowe, Momtaza Mehri, and Gbenga Adeoba, tracking a wide range of subjects from confessional poetics to geopolitical art to diasporic identity.
“I’m especially excited,” she told me after the news. “You don’t get to experience the joy of winning your first major award twice. So, yes, there’s that. And being the first woman in my lineage to choose poetry, and strive to thrive in it, that feels powerful, too. It means the world to me.”
We are thrilled at Open Country Mag to see one of our own step into this kind of recognition. The Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award for Poetry has a long tradition of honoring outstanding work, and Uzomba joins that list not as an outsider but as a voice demanding to be heard. She has been building steadily, from those early afternoons at The Writers Community to her reviews and Profiles here, and now to this moment.
“But more deeply, what fills me with pride is knowing I stayed true to poetry, wholly and sincerely,” she said. “Seeing how far I’ve come since then is deeply affirming.” ♦
