Ground Provisions

Shortlisted for the 2026 Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection, 2026 Forward Prizes for Poetry and Shorlisted for the 2026 OCM Bocas Prize
In her debut collection, Ground Provisions, Shauna M. Morgan takes us on a sensory journey across landscapes of the body and the earth.The collection traverses the natural world from the Caribbean to North America and provokes questions about identity in the making of diasporas and the formation of multi-ethnic realities. What remains and what is created anew? Who emerges at the fissures of culture? What is learned from human relationships with the land? How do we make provisions between generations?

Shauna M. Morgan is a poet, scholar, and teacher of creative writing and Africana literature at the University of Kentucky in the United States. Both her scholarly work and her poetry explore the ecosystems of multi-ethnic Black life with attention to the body, loss, grief, identity, and freedom in the natural world. Her poetry has appeared in A Gathering Together, Interviewing the Caribbean, A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, ProudFlesh: New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness, among other periodicals and anthologies