London-Born British-Ghanaian poet Dzifa Benson has been announced as winner of the UK’s leading poetry prize, the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship, a prize set up to recognise and give a platform to the next generation of British poets – a group of writers whose poetry reflects what it means to live and work in Britain today.

2021 marks the third and final year of the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship which was set up in 2017 to show what poetry in modern Britain looks like.  Not only does the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship celebrate poetry – the most underfunded of all British art forms –  but champions a new generation of British poets who are writing poetry that speaks to 21st century Britain. Previous recipients have included the Trinidad-born London based poet, Anthony Joseph, Nigerian-British poet Yomi Ṣode and Hafsah Aneela Bashir.

Alongside the freely given grant of £15,000, the Fellows will each receive mentoring from the programme’s manager Dr Nathalie Teitler FRSA and access to experts drawn from the poetry world and beyond. Nathalie has run literature programmes promoting diversity in the UK for over 20 years, founding the first national mentoring and translation programmes for writers living in exile. She is the Director of The Complete Works – a national development programme that helped to raise the number of Black and Asian poets published by major presses.

Dzifa Benson. Photo Credit: Kaya La Bonte-Hurst

Born to Ghanaian parents in London, Dzifa grew up in Ghana, Nigeria and Togo and now lives in West London.Dzifa Benson is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work intersects science, art, the body and ritual, which she explores through poetry, prose, theatre-making, essays and criticism.

Dzifa is also a critically acclaimed performance poet and playwright who has performed at London’s Old Vic Theatre, Royal Opera House, Tate Britain, Bush Theatre, Kew Gardens and House of Commons amongst many others. Her work covers topics including Black Women’s bodies and sex, the impact of Britain’s colonialist past on its future, the Black British experience, science and rituals.

Dzifa abridged the National Youth Theatre’s 2021 production of Othello in collaboration with Olivier award-winning director Miranda Cromwell and is working on a commissioned play, Black Mozart/White Chevalier. She is a widely published poet whose most recent publication is in Staying Human, the latest in Bloodaxe Books’ celebrated series of anthologies. Her work also regularly features in Poetry Review, The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Telegraph. She has an MA in text and Performance from Birkbeck and RADA and is also a Ledbury Critic.

She has also been artist in residence at the Courtauld Institute of Art; producer of a poetry in performance event responding to David Hockney’s work in Tate Britain; producer and host of a literature and music experience in the Dissenters Gallery of Kensal Green Cemetery and core artist in BBC Africa Beyond’s cross-arts project, Translations as well as at Shakespeare and Co. in Paris and as part of The Wonder Project at Kew Gardens.

Header Image: Dzifa Benson