Victoria Adukwei Bulley | |
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Born | Essex, England |
Education | Royal Holloway, University of London |
Occupation | Poet |
Notable work | Quiet (2022) |
Awards | Folio Prize; John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize |
Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a British-born Ghanaian poet. [1] Her debut poetry book Quiet (2022) won the Rathbones Folio Prize for Poetry and the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize in 2023. [2] [3]
Bulley is of Ghanaian heritage, born and brought up in Essex, England. In 2019, she was awarded a Techne [4] scholarship for doctoral work at Royal Holloway, University of London. [1]
An alumna of The Complete Works poetry mentoring programme initiated by Bernardine Evaristo, Bulley has held residencies internationally in the US, Brazil, and at the V&A. [1]
Bulley's writing has been published in Granta , [5] The Guardian , [6] and The White Review , [7] as well as in anthologies, including Rising Stars: New Young Voices in Poetry [8] (Otter-Barry Books, 2017) and Ten: Poets of the New Generation, edited by Karen McCarthy Woolf (Bloodaxe Books, 2017). [9]
She produced the Mother Tongues intergenerational project, in which poets worked with their mothers to translate their poetry into their mother-tongues. [10] [11]
Bulley's 2017 debut pamphlet Girl B was published by Akashic Books and included in the collection New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set, edited by Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes. [12] Karen McCarthy Woolf called it "a probing, thoughtful, and quietly exhilarating debut". [13]
Bulley's first book collection, Quiet (2022), was praised in The Times Literary Supplement for containing "clever and capacious poems" [14] and described in The Guardian as "mark[ing] the arrival of a major poetic talent". [15] Quiet was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and won the 2023 Rathbones Folio Prize for Poetry and the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize. [16] [17]
Year | Book | Award | Category | Result | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2018 | — | Eric Gregory Award | — | Won | [18] |
2022 | Quiet | T. S. Eliot Prize | — | Shortlisted | [19] |
2023 | Rathbones Folio Prize | Poetry | Won | [20] | |
John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize | — | Won | [21] |