Isabelle Baafi

Isabelle Baafi is the author of Chaotic Good (Faber & Faber / Wesleyan University Press, 2025), which was shortlisted for the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection 2025 and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her pamphlet Ripe (ignitionpress, 2020) won a Somerset Maugham Award and was the Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice for Spring 2021. She won first prize in the Winchester Poetry Prize 2023, second prize in the London Magazine Poetry Prize 2022, and the Vincent Cooper Literary Prize 2019. Her writing has been published in the TLS, Granta, The Poetry Review, Callaloo, The London Magazine, Oxford Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the Reviews Editor of Poetry London and has edited issues of Magma, Poetry Wales, Skin Deep, and Tentacular. She is also a Ledbury Poetry Critic and an Obsidian Foundation Fellow.