Bio
Momtaza Mehri is an award-winning writer of poetry, prose and essays. Born in 1995 to Somali parents, the poet grew up in the Middle East and later moved to North-West London. She trained as a charity worker and biomedical scientist. Inspired by the appreciation for poetry in her family home, Mehri became interested in the political dimension to writing about identity issues and understandings of the self, and published her first poems in literary journals in 2014. She was a member of 2016-2020 cohort of The Complete Works, a national writing collective and programme aimed at amplifying Black British voices in poetry. Mehri was mentored by fellow poet Pascale Petit, who helped refine her pen. She has since gained acclaim in the literary world and completed a number of residencies at institutions, such as The British Library and Homerton College at the University of Cambridge.
Mehri believes that poetry can be a powerful vehicle for generating discussions around solidarity and belonging, also across temporal and geo-political borders. She often plays with the theme of movement in her work, from exploring migrant lives across different places and languages to topics of disruption and displacement. Her first volume Sugah. Lump. Prayer. was part of the New-Generation African Poets’ chapbook set in 2017, and traced the issue of immigration through the personal and the political. In the following year, she was appointed Young People’s Poet Laureate for London, and was co-winner of the Brunel International African Poetry prize, alongside Hiwot Adilow and Theresa Lola. Mehri also won the Manchester Writing Prize 2019 and subsequently published a pamphlet of poems, Doing the Most with the Least. This work lyrically recounts geopolitical tensions and foreshadowed themes that recur in her later works.
In 2023, the poet published her collection Bad Diaspora Poems, an experimental text which engages with the definition behind the diaspora and related identities. Mixing the personal with the political, Mehri reimagines figures such as the poet, translator and refugee, by combining intertextual references. The collection won both the Eric Gregory Award and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection with praise for its poetic style and critical tone. Her creative writing has also been showcased in The Guardian, POETRY, Granta, Wasafiri, Bidoun, and Poetry International.
In addition to her involvement in the literary scene, Mehri engages with criticism, translation, radio and education. Fascinated by what she calls anti-disciplinary research and the role of online platforms in the sharing of creative work, she has published as an independent researcher on these topics in national newspapers and journals such as Wasafiri. Her curational work was for example aimed at providing visibility for Black Muslim women. (CG)
Prizes and Nominations
- Out-Spoken Page Poetry Prize 2017
- Young People’s Poet Laureate for London 2018
- Brunel International African Poetry Prize 2018
- National Poetry Competition 2018
- Plough Prize 2018
- Manchester Writing Prize 2019
- Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism 2022
- Eric Gregory Award 2023
- Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2023
- Sky Arts Poetry Award 2024
- Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year 2024
Bibliography
Chingonyi, Kayo. More Fiya: A New Collection of Black British Poetry. Canongate Books, 2022.
Essah, Abena et al, editors. The Runaways London Anthology: For the Enslaved Freedom-Seekers of the 17th and 18th Centuries. Ink Sweat & Tears, 2021.
Flood, Alison. “Somali-British Poet Momtaza Mehri Named Young People’s Laureate for London.” The Guardian, 16 April 2018.
Knight, Lucy. “Bodhan Piasecki Wins Best Performed Poem in New Forward Prize Category.” The Guardian, 16 Oct 2023.
Long, Rachel et al. “‘Stop Finding Dimensions to Silence’: Selections and Reflections from Octavia Poetry Collective.” Wasafiri, 105, vol. 36, no. 1, 2021, pp. 42-53.
Mercer, Em. “Imagining the Impossible: Yara Rodrigues Fowler Suhaiymah Manzoor-Kahn, and Momtaza Mehri on Feminist Futures.” Wasafiri, 119, vol. 39, no. 3, 2024, pp. 42-49.
McCarthy Woolf, Karen (editor). Ten: Poets of the New Generation. Bloodaxe Books, 2017.
McCarthy Woolf, Karen and Teitler, Nathalie (editors). The Complete Works Poets. Bloodaxe Books, 2023.
McIntosh, Malachi. “Images of Transcendence: “Crisis Always” and the New Black British Poets.” Études anglaise, vol. 76, no. 1, 2023, pp. 31-46.
Mehri, Momtaza. Bad Diaspora Poems. Jonathan Cape, 2023.
–. Doing the Most with the Least. Goldsmiths University Press, 2019.
–. Sugah. Lump. Prayer. Akashic, 2017.
–. “Two Poems by Momtaza Mehri.” Frontier Poetry, 14 Dec 2017.
–. “Report: Dispatches from the Black Gulf by Momtaza Mehri.” The Poetry Review, vol. 110, no. 1, 2020, n.p.
–. “A Nightly Bargain – An Exclusive Poem.” Hyphen, 5 Oct 2023.
–. “Girl on a Train: Getting Real with Fatima Daas.” Bidoun, n.d.
–. “A Tableau of Inspiration or Franklin Sitting on the Solitary Garden Deck Chair in 1973’s Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.” Jewish Currents, Web, 28 Mary 2021.
–. “Anti-racism requires so much more than ‘checking your privilege’.” The Guardian, 7 July 2020.
–. “City Poem Written on the 189 to Brent Cross, and: Dhaqan Celis/Return to sender, and: It’s Not You, It’s the Housing Crisis.” Prairie Schooner, vol. 97, no. 3, 2023, pp. 100-102.
–. “Who Go, Who We.” Wasafiri, vol. 38, no. 2, 2023, pp. 37-38.
–. “Letters From a Young (Female) Poet.” The Millions, 31 Jan. 2018.
–. “Harlem is Hijaz is Havan is Harar: Or the Whole Point of the Black Arts Movement is That They Were Moving.” BOMB, no. 148, 2019, pp. 124-125.
–. “Small Talk.” Poetry, vol. 241, no. 1, 2019, p. 16.
–. “Glory Be to the Gang Gang Gang.” Poetry, vol. 214, no. 1, 2019, p. 60.
Russell, Legacy and Mehri, Momtaza. “Conversation: Two writers discuss cyberfeminism, the Black trauma at the root of memes and why online space is still ‘real’.” Frieze: Contemporary Art and Culture, 213, 2020, pp. 50-57.
Uzomba, Iheoma. “Momtaza Mehri’s Fluid Diasporas.” Open Country Mag, 28 March 2024.
