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The team at Artemesia are delighted to announce that Malika Booker will be our judge for the 2026 Poetry Competition.

Photo credit: Josimar Senior Black Writers’ Guild

Malika is a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, a British poet of Guyanese and Grenadian Parentage, and co-founder of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (A writer’s collective). The Anthology – Two Young, Two Black, Too Different, Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen was recently published to celebrate Malika Poetry Kitchen’s twenty-year anniversary.

Her pamphlet Breadfruit, (flippedeye, 2007) received a Poetry Society recommendation and her poetry collection Pepper Seed (Peepal Tree Press, 2013) was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre 2014 prize for first full collection.

She is published with the Poets Sharon Olds and Warsan Shire in The Penguin Modern Poet Series 3: Your Family: Your Body (2017). Booker and Shara McCallum recently co-edited the issue of Stand Journal curating an anthology of poems by African American, Black British, & Caribbean Women & Identifying Writers.

A Cave Canem Fellow, and inaugural Poet in Residence at The Royal Shakespeare Company, Malika was awarded the Cholmondeley Award (2019) for outstanding contribution to poetry and elected a Royal Society of Literature Fellow (2022). She is the first woman to win the Forward Prize for Best Single poem twice: The Little Miracles (2020) and Libation (2023).

Competition Administrator and first point of contact

Kate Rose is the competition administrator. You can contact her at #kate rose in the subject box via artemesia.arts@gmail.com

Kate is a published poet and has been placed in a number of poetry competitions. The 2026 competition will be the eighth competition she has managed.

The publisher

Mosaïque Press is a boutique bibliophile publisher passionate about books. The editors at Mosaïque love giving form to their authors’ ideas, supporting their creativity with their special blend of editorial, design and publishing experience. Their growing portfolio of poetry is published under Chapbooks by Mosaïque Press. Mosaïque Press published the Artemesia Arts anthologies, Colours of the Moon (2023), Lunar Rainbow (2024) and Sea of Serenity (2025), which include 122 poems and 99 poets. Copies of all of these chapbooks books may be found on Amazon UK, search by book name.

Poetry@Treignac 2026

Please note that we would love to see and hear winning and commended poets at poetry@treignac 2026 in Treignac, South West France. Unfortunately we are not able to cover the costs associated with the event.

This is a selected event for invited poets only and details of the event can be found elsewhere on our website.