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Romalyn Ante FRSL is an award-winning Filipino-born British poet, novelist, and editor. She is based in the Midlands and currently sits on the editorial board for Poetry London.
Romalyn was born and raised in Lipa, Philippines, and migrated to the UK in 2005. She writes in English as her second language. In 2012, she began writing poetry seriously after becoming a registered nurse.
Her debut collection, Antiemetic for Homesickness (Chatto, 2020), was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. It was the Observer’s Poetry Book of the Month and was named as one of The Poetry School’s Best Poetry Books of 2020. Her second collection, AGIMAT (Chatto, 2024), received the Society of Authors’ Arthur Welton Award, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and Observer Poetry Book of the Month. Her poetry has also been used in Edexcel A Level English Literature assessment materials and in the Cambridge International GCSE Curriculum.
Her debut novel, The Left-Behind Child, will be published by Chatto in August 2026. In 2025, she received the Royal Society of Literature’s Literature Matters Award to write the first draft of her novel-in-progress, Tanker Boys.
Romalyn served as a Writer-in-Residence for the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in 2026. Her residency was part of an Arts Council England project titled ‘A Balikbayan Box for Nursing’ by the RCN. The title refers to the Filipino custom of migrant workers sending boxes of items back home and is inspired by Romalyn Ante’s poem, Notes Inside a Balikbayan Box. Romalyn’s work has also been featured on both literary and mainstream platforms, such as BBC World News, TEDxNHS, World Literature Today, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue UK.
Romalyn was awarded the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship, the Silliman University Fellowship, and, in 2023, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is the founder of Tsaá with Roma. She is also the co-founding editor of harana poetry, a magazine dedicated to poets who write in English as a second or parallel language.
Romalyn has judged international poetry competitions, including the Poetry London Prize, the Manchester Poetry Prize, and the National Poetry Competition.
She is also a current judge for the Jhalak Poetry Prize, the Forward Poetry Prize, and the Cholmondeley Awards.
In addition to her literary pursuits, she has years of experience as a specialist nurse, CBT therapist and clinical lead within the NHS.
Before her debut poetry collection
In 2019, Romalyn was appointed Poet-in-Residence at Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust and Hosking Houses Trust.
Before her debut poetry collection, she was the first East and Southeast Asian poet to win the Creative Future Literary Award and the Manchester Poetry Prize (2017), as well as the Poetry London Prize (2018).
Her poetry pamphlet, Rice & Rain (V Press), won the 2018 Saboteur Awards for Best Poetry Pamphlet.
Praise for her work
'Spellbinding.' – The Observer
‘Captivating, playful, moving, witty and agile... an unforced poet with a lightness of touch and fortitude’ – The Guardian
'Romalyn Ante is a poet to fall in love with’ – Liz Berry, author of Black Country
'Ante's poems are like embers, pared back to a slow-burning emotional core’ – Times Literary Supplement
'An alchemical wonder of a poet.’ – Fiona Benson, author of Midden Witch
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