Winner of the 2016 New Poets' Prize, judged by Helen Mort
"The First Five Storms has remarkable range and imaginative depth, from Fibonacci to Loch na Fuaiche, from the small detail of 'thawed streams like cracks in the bone' to a panorama of the whole 'lifting land'. These are poems that excavate, honour and renew." Helen Mort
Theophilus Kwek is 22 and studying for a MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies in Oxford. He has published three collections of poetry, most recently Giving Ground (2016). He won the Martin Starkie Prize in 2014, the Jane Martin Prize in 2015, and the New Poets’ Prize in 2016, and was recently placed Second in the Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry in Translation, 2016. Having served as President of the Oxford University Poetry Society, he is the Co-Founder of The Kindling and a Co-Editor of Oxford Poetry. Having recently arrived in a country best-known for its weather, he charts the storms of history, language, place, and tradition in The First Five Storms.