We're very excited to share that Shauna M. Morgan's debut collection Ground Provisions has been longlisted for the 2026 Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection in the 2026 Forward Prizes for Poetry. This year, the judges had a deluge of submissions, sifting through the work of 500+ poets, so it's a huge achievement for all the poets who made the longlists. The judges for 2026 are Romalyn Ante, WN Herbert, Michael Mullen, Yomi Ṣode, and Sarah Moss (chair).
Raised in a small farming community in Clarendon, Jamaica, Shauna M. Morgan now tends a small urban garden in Lexington, Kentucky (US), where she teaches creative writing and Africana literature at the University of Kentucky.
In her debut collection, Shauna takes us on a sensory journey across landscapes of body and earth. Immersing readers in lush language, the collection traverses the Caribbean and North America as it provokes questions about identity in the making of diasporas and the formation of multi-ethnic realities. We witness grief overwhelming the mind and body, children holding painful secrets, women leaning into sensuality, and families coming to terms with fracture and reconciliation.
These poems follow the desire for freedom through intertwined inheritances, asking us to imagine the liberatory possibilities of establishing new roots with ancestral seeds. From a backabush Jamaican community to an often-hostile US environment, these poems interrogate power and explore the necessity of ancestral memory. They answer the crucial need to touch and connect.
