Poet Laureate Announcement
On behalf of the Executive Board of the Caribbean Philosophical Association, I am most pleased to announce that on the occasion of our gathering in Martinique to pay homage to the 100th birthday of Frantz Fanon, we have appointed Azad Ashim Sharma as the Poet Laureate of the CPA. With this appointment we recognize Azad’s unique poetic agency for expanding our project of "shifting the geography of reason" to "shifting the geography of poetry." We are delighted to have Azad lead our efforts to cultivate projects that recognize and deepen the profoundly important connections between poetry and the Global South community, as well as between poetic expression and philosophical work. In honor of this occasion, our Poet Laureate has shared the following words:
I am honoured, humbled, and extremely grateful to be given this new role within the Caribbean Philosophical Association and express my gratitude to the Executive Board for bestowing upon me this great, humbling, and life-changing honour. Although I was not born in the Caribbean, I’ve been grateful to be reborn as a writer in the tradition of Caribbean Philosophy – with the influences of Martinican writers René Ménil, Suzanne and Aimé Césaire, Edouard Glissant, and Patrick Chamoiseau, in particular. In all my work, I have grounded the great conceptual apparatuses of creolisation, existentialism, anti-colonialism, and anti-racism. I hope my attempts at filling this role with intention, humility, and respect hold the door open for poets seeking to expose themselves to new modes of thinking and creation whilst also encouraging those in more academic positions to turn to poetry to continue the long historical conversation and play its rough music that guides us in the forging of what Frantz Fanon called a new humanism.
I dedicate this honour to the people of Palestine and all the Palestinians in diaspora during this time of active genocide. If there is one aspect of struggle I have learned from Caribbean Philosophy, it is that our drive towards liberation, social justice, and alternative futures is a shared endeavor. We are learning this from the continued oppression in Haiti, the Congo, the Sudan, as well as the ongoing catastrophe of climate degradation. None of us has meaning alone and I look forward to centring the long duration of anticolonial verve, as it is made manifest by the tradition of Caribbean Poeticism, in all my work as the Poet Laureate of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. I am deeply moved by the ways in which the CPA shifts the geography of reason in a culture of recognising academic and literary achievement, merit, and innovation. I am constantly inspired by the velocity of spirit and growth of community that comes by taking seriously these public-facing aspects of the work to be done, of which shifting the culture of a poet laureate in a de-nationalised and yet broader community orientation feels absolutely necessary given the rise of fascism and ethnonationalist segregation that define the early 21st Century.
Importantly, I'd also like to acknowledge my maternal grandparents, Zainab E. Asvat and Aziz B. Kazi who struggled through so much to create the set of conditions that gave me life. I also want to express my gratitude to to my parents Zenobia and Anand Sharma, my brother Gyan, my extended family in India and South Africa: their love, support, encouragement and unyielding provision of a cogent political education undoubtedly made me aspire to make art and write in a way that engaged with philosophy. From my grandfather's first edition copies of Frantz Fanon, to my grandmother's stories of Anti-Apartheid revolt and resistance, to my mother's attention to psychology as integral for the becoming-human we need to do in a racist world, and my father's great knowledge of history and the influence of his days as a student leader in the 70s and 80s in India, to my brother's art and his indefatigable practice of relation to a world that, because of his autism, consistently misunderstands and excludes him: I wouldn't be in a position to write with any kind of integrity without these formative experiences.
Since 2023, my engagement with the CPA, its community and intellectual contributions, has resulted in a dramatic, necessary, and life-changing shift in my own writing and role as a publisher. This journey would not have been possible without the support for my poetry from a vibrant small and independent press culture, inclusive of all the professors who have guided me during my time at the University of Sussex and at Birkbeck College, alongside the global community of poets whom I am lucky to call friends, readers, peers, chosen family. Had Aaron Kent of Broken Sleep Books not taken a chance on Ergastulum: Vignettes of Lost Time and supported the revised and expanded 5th Anniversary Edition of my debut Against the Frame in 2022, or Stephen Motika of Nightboat Books and Anthony Anaxagourou of Out Spoken Press not taken on my third collection Boiled Owls in 2024, I simply wouldn't be in a position to accept this honour. I look forward greatly to working directly with independent and small publishers across the world to bring a vibrant and rooted community of poets to the CPA. I’d also like to pay homage to my colleagues and collaborators at the87press, Kashif Sharma-Patel, Sopo Ramischwili, Aisheshek Magauina, our advisory board and community of readers and writers for their support and encouragement over the years that created space for me to write and think. Finally, I’d like to thank Suresh Ariaratnam, my literary agent, who has been an invaluable source of support, wisdom, and guidance over the years. I am determined to make this honour benefit all in my community and to create new opportunities for writers in the process.
With joy,
Jacqueline M. Martinez, CPA President
Azad Ashim Sharma [Sopo Ramischwili, 2025]
Azad Ashim Sharma is the Founding Director of the87press and serves as Poetry Editor at Philosophy and Global Affairs and the CLR James Journal; he is also the Commissioning Editor of The Hythe Review. He is a PhD Candidate in English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, Boiled Owls (Nightboat Books, 2024) which was shortlisted for the Jhalak Poetry Prize. His second collection Ergastulum: Vignettes of Lost Time (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) was the recipient of the Caribbean Philosophical Association’s Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista Outstanding Book Award. In July 2025, Azad became the Poet Laureate of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He lives in South London and is currently working on a novel and his fourth collection of poetry.