about
Born Issele-Uku, Nigeria
His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Chicago Reader, Gulf Coast, Palette Poetry, 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and elsewhere. They were a finalist for the 2019 Gerard Kraak Prize and have also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2020) and the Best of the Net (2014 and 2020).
Anowe has served as assistant poetry editor at The Nation, poetry editor of Sycamore Review, and poetry chapbooks editor for Praxis Magazine.
The poet now lives with their spouse in Chicago where they are a Gwendolyn M. Carter Fellow in African Studies and poetry candidate in Northwestern University’s Litowitz MFA + MA. They are at work on their first collection of poems and a novel.
If you care to look, you can find Anowe on instagram @jk_anowe .
selected poems
“a land named revelry,” Gulf Coast • “collected thesis statements,” Chicago Reader • “Yambacongo’s Cue” transl. of Jean-Claude Awono’s “Le Poeme de Yambacongo,” 19 Ways of Seeing Awono, (Bakwa Books, forthcoming) • “Aubade with Notes on DNA,” Palette Poetry • “Love in the Time of Arrests” and “Sepulchre,” Glass Poetry Journal • “A Musical Malady,” Kissing Dynamite • “An Outpatient’s Night at the Psyche Ward” and “A Road’s Guide to Kill,” THE SHORE • “Keeping House,” “Roadkill in the Rearview,” and “Parable of Efulefu,” Bakwa Magazine • “Aubade with Purgatory,” Agbowó • “Tender Crow’s Feet,” 20.35 Africa
Image: Eadweard Muybridge. Animal Locomotion, Plate 758, 1887. The Art Institute of Chicago, Kenneth and Christine Tanaka Fund.