Forward Prizes for Poetry | |
---|---|
Awarded for | Best Collection (£10,000); Best First Collection (£5,000); Best Single Poem (£1,000) |
Sponsored by | Forward Worldwide, Arts Council England, The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, The estate of Felix Dennis |
Date | 1992 |
Location | United Kingdom |
The Forward Prizes for Poetry are major British awards for poetry, presented annually at a public ceremony in London. They were founded in 1992 by William Sieghart with the aim of celebrating excellence in poetry and increasing its audience. The prizes do this by identifying and honouring talent: collections published in the UK and Ireland over the course of the previous year are eligible, as are single poems nominated by journal editors or prize organisers. Each year, works shortlisted for the prizes – plus those highly commended by the judges – are collected in the Forward Book of Poetry.
The awards have been sponsored since their inception by the content marketing agency Bookmark, formerly Forward Worldwide. The best first collection prize is sponsored by the estate of Felix Dennis.
The Forward Prizes for Poetry celebrated their 30th anniversary in 2021. For the 2023 prizes, a new category for outstanding performance of a poem was added to the list of awards. [1]
The Forward Prizes for Poetry consist of three awards:
The Prizes are run by the Forward Arts Foundation, which is also responsible for National Poetry Day. The executive director of the Forward Arts Foundation is Susannah Herbert. [2]
Year | Author | Title | Publication | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
1992 | Jackie Kay | "Black Bottom" | ||
1993 | Vicki Feaver | "Judith" | ||
1994 | Iain Crichton Smith | "Autumn" | ||
1995 | Jenny Joseph | "In Honour of Love" | ||
1996 | Kathleen Jamie | "The Graduates" | ||
1997 | Lavinia Greenlaw | "A World Where News Travelled Slowly" | ||
1998 | Sheenagh Pugh | "Envying Owen Beattie" | ||
1999 | Robert Minhinnick | "Twenty-five Laments for Iraq" | ||
2000 | Tessa Biddington | "The Death of Descartes" | ||
2001 | Ian Duhig | "The Lammas Hireling" | ||
2002 | Medbh McGuckian | "She is in the Past, She has this Grace" | The Shop | |
2003 | Robert Minhinnick | "The Fox in the National Museum of Wales" | Poetry London | |
2004 | Daljit Nagra | "Look We Have Coming to Dover!" | Poetry Review | |
2005 | Paul Farley | "Liverpool Disappears for a Billionth of a Second" | The North | |
2006 | Sean O'Brien | "Fantasia on a Theme of James Wright" | Poetry Review | |
2007 | Alice Oswald | "Dunt" | Poetry London | [8] |
2008 | Don Paterson | "Love Poem for Natalie 'Tusja' Beridze" | Poetry Review | |
2009 | Robin Robertson | "At Roane Head" | ||
2010 | Julia Copus | "An Easy Passage" | ||
2011 | R. F. Langley | "To a Nightingale" | London Review of Books | |
2012 | Denise Riley | "A Part Song" | [12] | |
2013 | Nick MacKinnon | "The Metric System" | The Warwick Review | |
2014 | Stephen Santus | "In a Restaurant" | The Bridport Prize | |
2015 | Claire Harman | "The Mighty Hudson" | TLS | |
2016 | Sasha Dugdale | "Joy" | PN Review | [18] |
2017 | Ian Patterson | "The Plenty of Nothing" | PN Review | [33] |
2018 | Liz Berry | "The Republic of Motherhood" | Granta | [20] |
2019 | Parwana Fayyaz | "Forty Names" | PN Review | |
2020 | Malika Booker | "The Little Miracles" | Magma | [24] |
2021 | Nicole Sealey | "Pages 22–29" an excerpt from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure | Poetry London | [26] |
2022 | Nick Laird | "Up Late" | Granta | [28] |
2023 | Malika Booker | "Libation" | Poetry Review | [34] |
The Carnegie Medal for Writing, established in 1936, is a British literary award that annually recognises one outstanding new English-language book for children or young adults. It is conferred upon the author by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), who calls it "the UK's oldest and most prestigious book award for children's writing". CILIP is currently partnered with the audio technology company Yoto in connection with the award.
The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize was a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of literature by an author from the Commonwealth aged 35 or under, written in English and published in the United Kingdom. Established in 1942, it was one of the oldest literary awards in the UK.
The Guardian Children's Fiction Prize or Guardian Award was a literary award that annual recognised one fiction book written for children or young adults and published in the United Kingdom. It was conferred upon the author of the book by The Guardian newspaper, which established it in 1965 and inaugurated it in 1967. It was a lifetime award in that previous winners were not eligible. At least from 2000 the prize was £1,500. The prize was apparently discontinued after 2016, though no formal announcement appears to have been made.
The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each year by the Society of Authors. Set up by William Somerset Maugham in 1947 the awards enable young writers to enrich their work by gaining experience in foreign countries. The awards go to writers under the age of 35 with works published in the year before the award; the work can be either non-fiction, fiction or poetry.
Alice Priscilla Lyle Oswald is a British poet from Reading, Berkshire. Her work won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002 and the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2017. In September 2017, she was named as BBC Radio 4's second Poet-in-Residence, succeeding Daljit Nagra. From 1 October 2019 until 30 September 2023, she was the Oxford Professor of Poetry.
The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize is an annual literary award given by the Royal Society of Literature. The £10,000 award is for a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry that evokes the "spirit of a place", and is written by someone who is a citizen of or who has been resident in the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.
The Waterstones Children's Book Prize is an annual award given to a work of children's literature published during the previous year. First awarded in 2005, the purpose of the prize is "to uncover hidden talent in children's writing" and is therefore open only to authors who have published no more than two or three books, depending on which category they are in. The prize is awarded by British book retailer Waterstones.
The PEN Pinter Prize and the Pinter International Writer of Courage Award both comprise an annual literary award launched in 2009 by English PEN in honour of the late Nobel Literature Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, who had been a Vice President of English PEN and an active member of the International PEN Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC). The award is given to "a British writer or a writer resident in Britain of outstanding literary merit who, in the words of Pinter’s Nobel speech ['Art, Truth and Politics'], casts an 'unflinching, unswerving' gaze upon the world and shows 'a fierce, intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies'." The Prize is shared with an "International Writer of Courage," defined as "someone who has been persecuted for speaking out about [his or her] beliefs," selected by English PEN's Writers at Risk Committee in consultation with the annual Prize winner, and announced during an award ceremony held at the British Library, on or around 10 October, the anniversary of Pinter's birth.
The BBC National Short Story Award has been described as 'the most prestigious [award] for a single short story' and the richest prize in the world for a single short story. It is an annual short story contest in the United Kingdom which is open to UK residents and nationals. The winner receives £15,000 and four shortlisted writers receive £600 each.
The Stella Prize is an Australian annual literary award established in 2013 for writing by Australian women in all genres, worth $50,000. It was originally proposed by Australian women writers and publishers in 2011, modelled on the UK's Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.
TheWriters' Prize, previously known as the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Folio Prize and The Literature Prize, is a literary award that was sponsored by the London-based publisher The Folio Society for its first two years, 2014–2015. Starting in 2017, the sponsor was Rathbone Investment Management. At the 2023 award ceremony, it was announced that the prize was looking for new sponsorship as Rathbones would be ending their support. In November 2023, having failed to secure a replacement sponsor, the award's governing body announced its rebrand as The Writers' Prize.
Roger Robinson is a British writer, musician and performer who lives between England and Trinidad. Best known for A Portable Paradise which won the T. S. Eliot Prize 2019.
Hannah Lowe is a British writer, known for her collection of poetry Chick (2013), her family memoir Long Time, No See (2015) and her research into the historicising of the HMT Empire Windrush and postwar Caribbean migration to Britain. Her 2021 book The Kids won the Costa Book of the Year award.
The Jhalak Prize for Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour is an annual literary prize awarded to British or British-resident BAME writers. £1,000 is awarded to the sole winner.
Caleb Femi is a Nigerian-British author, film-maker, photographer, and former young people's laureate for London. His debut poetry collection, Poor, was awarded a Forward Prize for Poetry.
Nicole Sealey is an American poet who was born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, and raised in Apopka, Florida, US. She is the former executive director of Cave Canem Foundation. She won the 2015 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize for The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, and her collection Ordinary Beast was a finalist for the 2018 PEN Open Book Award. Her poem "Pages 22–29, an excerpt from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure" won a Forward Prize for Poetry in October 2021. Sealey lives in Brooklyn, New York.
The Costa Book Award for Novel, formerly known as the Whitbread Award (1971–2005), was an annual literary award for novels, as part of the Costa Book Awards.
The Costa Book Award for First Novel, formerly known as the Whitbread Award (1971–2006), was an annual literary award for authors' debut novels, part of the Costa Book Awards which were discontinued in 2022, the 2021 awards being the last made.
The Costa Book Award for Children's Book, formerly known as the Whitbread Award (1971–2005), was an annual literary award for children's books, part of the Costa Book Awards, which were discontinued in 2022, the 2021 awards being the last made.