Momtaza Mehri

Momtaza Mehri (born 1995) is a Somali-British poet and essayist.

Life
Momtaza Mehri is of Somali heritage and grew up in Kilburn, north-west London, and Birmingham in "the kind of household where if you're getting shouted at by your aunt to come downstairs, in one sentence she will use Somali, Arabic, Italian and English." She lives in Kilburn, and has trained as biomedical scientist.

Literary career
Mehri began writing for publication in 2014.

In 2016–2017, she was featured in DAZED, BuzzFeed BBC Radio 4, Poetry Society of America; Mask Magazine, SAND Journal, and Frontier Poetry. She became a member of The Complete Works mentoring programme and went on to win the Out-Spoken Page Poetry Prize (2017) and to publish a pamphlet, ''Sugah. Lump. Prayer'' with Akashic Books.

In 2018, Mehri won third prize in the National Poetry Competition and was named the Young People's Laureate of London.

In 2019, Mehri won the Manchester Poetry Prize for unpublished writing, and published a pamphet with Goldsmiths Press.

In 2022, Mehri was shortlisted for the Observer/Antony Burgess Prize for Arts journalism.

In 2023, Mehri won an Eric Gregory Award and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection with Bad Diaspora Poems. It was also shortlisted for the 2023 Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award.

Mehri then took up the position of Jessica Bardsley Poet in Residence at Homerton College Cambridge.

Publications

 * 2017: Sugah. Lump. Prayer (pamphlet), Akashic Books.
 * 2017: Contributor to Ten: Poets of the New Generation, edited by Karen McCarthy Woolf, Bloodaxe Books
 * 2019: Doing the Most with the Least (pamphlet), Goldsmiths Press
 * 2023: Bad Diaspora Poems, Random House