Safia Khan wins New Poets Prize 2021
NEWSFLASH: you can now buy ‘Too Much Mirch here.
We are so thrilled for Hive young poet Safia Kahn who is a winner of the international New Poets Prize 2021 – for her debut pamphlet collection ‘Too Much Mirch’. Safia started out in the network as a member of Doncaster Young Writers when she was 14! It’s been so lovely to see her grow as a poet over the last few years and we can’t want to hear her voice out there more widely.
Being awarded a New Poets Prize offers Safia the wonderful prize of pamphlet publication with The Poetry Business alongside three other winners.
We want to say a massive thank you to The Poetry Business for supporting early-career writers so young, and offering this wonderful opportunity to move onto publication. Safia joins recent Hive winners Georgie Woodhead, Lauren Hollingsworth Smith (2020) and Warda Yassin (2018). This year’s judge was Kim Moore.
Kim Moore on Safia’s collection, Too Much Mirch “The poems in this pamphlet constantly surprised me with their inventiveness with imagery and the way the writer challenges assumptions and stereotypes and turns them inside out. There are stunning poems here about family, racism, misogyny and the interplay between them. A particular strength of this writer is their colourful and lively way of writing about people in all their complexity. My favourite of these is Julie, a hairdresser who is off to a Brexit rally. This poem manages to be both funny and alarming as the poet concludes ‘This is Julie’s world, we’re all just living in it”.
Safia Khan is a member of Hive Young Poets and an alumnus of Doncaster Young Writers. She has been published in places like The North, BATH MAGG, Introduction X: The Poetry Business Book of New Poets and several Hive anthologies including Surfing the Twilight and Halfway Smile. She is currently studying medicine.
For more information, and to purchase 2020’s New Poets publications (hot off the press in June!) visit The Poetry Business