Eufe Tantia Jr has won the Best Poetry of Hope Book award at the February 2026 International Hope Book Awards for “Dividing Untangled Light: Verses of the Finite Heart,” a contemporary poetry collection that applies the precision of laboratory science to the messiness of human emotion.
The book, which also earned Tantia a finalist position for 2026 Author of the Year at the same awards, takes an unusual approach to poetry by using the author’s background as a Medical Laboratory Scientist as its conceptual framework. The collection employs spectrophotometry—the process of breaking light into component parts to reveal hidden information—as a metaphor for examining faith, love, grief, and spiritual growth.
When Science Meets the Soul
Rather than treating poetry as pure emotional expression, Tantia applies what he calls an analytical “dissection” of human experience. The contemporary poetry collection explores how a finite mind attempts to understand what the author describes as the “indivisible nature of light,” suggesting that our fragmented perception is exactly what allows us to see beauty in individual moments.
The collection covers faith and spirituality, including poems on belief, doubt, and religious divisions. It addresses love and loss through structured verse on heartbreak, parenthood, and resilience. And it doesn’t shy away from social commentary, tackling consumerism, corruption, social media, and modern social injustice through what Tantia frames as a “moral reckoning.”
A Family Collaboration
What distinguishes this reflective poetry book from typical solo collections is its multi-generational approach. Tantia included creative contributions from his children, Zacharie Ervine and Zephanie Estelle, transforming the project into a family legacy. The publisher itself, Vine and Stelle, takes its name from these collaborators, adding a layer of authenticity to the book’s themes about parenthood and time’s passage.
The recognition from the International Hope Book Awards highlights what judges apparently found distinctive: in an age when much contemporary poetry leans toward abstraction or cynicism, “Dividing Untangled Light” commits to finding hope within a technologically driven and divided world.
The Prism Effect
The book’s central philosophy proposes that human lives, even when they feel fragmented or broken, reveal their full spectrum through that very division. Like light passing through a prism, our experiences of grief, joy, faith, and doubt each represent different wavelengths of a complete, if incomprehensible, whole.
Written in a blend of lyrical, structured, and free verse, the socially conscious poetry collection targets readers drawn to emotional, spiritual, and philosophical themes—those looking for poetry that bridges personal experience with broader social and spiritual questions. The book positions itself as both a meditative experience and a gift for those who value meaningful, reflective verse that doesn’t divorce feeling from thought, or science from soul.
