| Forward Prizes for Poetry | |
| Awarded For: | Best Collection (£10,000); Best First Collection (£5,000); Best Single Poem (£1,000) |
| 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]
| 1992 | Faber and Faber | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1993 | Mean Time | Anvil Press Poetry | |||
| 1994 | Harm | Chatto & Windus | |||
| 1995 | Ghost Train | Oxford University Press | [3] | ||
| 1996 | Stones and Fires | Chatto & Windus | |||
| 1997 | Oxford University Press | ||||
| 1998 | Birthday Letters | Faber and Faber | |||
| 1999 | My Life Asleep | Oxford University Press | |||
| 2000 | Conjure | Picador | |||
| 2001 | Downriver | Picador | |||
| 2002 | Max is Missing | Picador | |||
| 2003 | Breaking News | Gallery Press | |||
| 2004 | Picador | [4] | |||
| 2005 | Legion | Faber and Faber | [5] [6] | ||
| 2006 | Swithering | Picador | [7] | ||
| 2007 | Picador | ||||
| 2008 | Faber and Faber | [8] | |||
| 2009 | Rain | Faber and Faber | [9] | ||
| 2010 | Human Chain | Faber and Faber | [10] | ||
| 2011 | Black Cat Bone | Jonathan Cape | [11] | ||
| 2012 | PLACE | Carcanet Press | [12] | ||
| 2013 | Drysalter | Cape Poetry | [13] | ||
| 2014 | Carcanet Press | [14] | |||
| 2015 | Penguin Books | [15] | |||
| 2016 | Measures of Expatriation | Carcanet Press | [16] [17] [18] | ||
| 2017 | On Balance | Carcanet Press | [19] | ||
| 2018 | Don't Call Us Dead | Chatto & Windus | [20] [21] | ||
| 2019 | Vertigo and Ghost | Cape Poetry | [22] [23] | ||
| 2020 | Carcanet Press | [24] [25] | |||
| 2021 | Notes on the Sonnets | Penned in the Margins | [26] [27] | ||
| 2022 | All the Men I Never Married | Seren Books | [28] [29] | ||
| 2023 | Jason Allen-Paisant | Self-Portrait as Othello | Carcanet Press | [30] |
| 1992 | Kid | Faber and Faber | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1993 | Nil Nil | Faber and Faber | |||
| 1994 | Progeny of Air | Peepal Tree Press | |||
| 1995 | Breathe Now, Breathe | Enitharmon Press | |||
| 1996 | The Thing in the Gap Stone Stile | Faber and Faber | |||
| 1997 | Picador | ||||
| 1998 | Picador | ||||
| 1999 | Bloodaxe Books | ||||
| 2000 | In | The Rialto | |||
| 2001 | Picador | ||||
| 2002 | Touching the Bones | The Gallery Press | |||
| 2003 | Fire Stations | Anvil Press Poetry | |||
| 2004 | These Days | Jonathan Cape | |||
| 2005 | Intimates | Jonathan Cape | |||
| 2006 | Countries of the Body | Aark Arts | |||
| 2007 | Look We Have Coming to Dover! | Faber and Faber | |||
| 2008 | Sunday at the Skin Launderette | Seren Books | |||
| 2009 | Faber and Faber | ||||
| 2010 | Berg | Seren Books | |||
| 2011 | Sidereal | Picador | |||
| 2012 | 81 Austerities | ||||
| 2013 | Dear Boy | Faber and Faber | |||
| 2014 | Black Country | Chatto & Windus | |||
| 2015 | Small Hands | Liverpool University Press | |||
| 2016 | Wife | Peepal Tree Press | |||
| 2017 | Night Sky with Exit Wounds | Jonathan Cape | [31] | ||
| 2018 | Shrines of Upper Austria | Carcanet Press | |||
| 2019 | If All the World and Love Were Young | Penguin Books | |||
| 2020 | RENDANG | ||||
| 2021 | Poor | Penguin Poetry | |||
| 2022 | Amnion | ||||
| 2023 | Momtaza Mehri | Bad Diaspora Poems | Jonathan Cape | [32] |
| 1992 | "Black Bottom" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1993 | "Judith" | ||||
| 1994 | "Autumn" | ||||
| 1995 | "In Honour of Love" | ||||
| 1996 | "The Graduates" | ||||
| 1997 | |||||
| 1998 | "Envying Owen Beattie" | ||||
| 1999 | "Twenty-five Laments for Iraq" | ||||
| 2000 | "The Death of Descartes" | ||||
| 2001 | "The Lammas Hireling" | ||||
| 2002 | "She is in the Past, She has this Grace" | The Shop | |||
| 2003 | "The Fox in the National Museum of Wales" | Poetry London | |||
| 2004 | "Look We Have Coming to Dover!" | Poetry Review | |||
| 2005 | "Liverpool Disappears for a Billionth of a Second" | The North | |||
| 2006 | "Fantasia on a Theme of James Wright" | Poetry Review | |||
| 2007 | "Dunt" | Poetry London | |||
| 2008 | "Love Poem for Natalie 'Tusja' Beridze" | Poetry Review | |||
| 2009 | "At Roane Head" | ||||
| 2010 | |||||
| 2011 | "To a Nightingale" | London Review of Books | |||
| 2012 | |||||
| 2013 | "The Metric System" | The Warwick Review | |||
| 2014 | "In a Restaurant" | The Bridport Prize | |||
| 2015 | "The Mighty Hudson" | TLS | |||
| 2016 | "Joy" | PN Review | |||
| 2017 | "The Plenty of Nothing" | PN Review | [33] | ||
| 2018 | Granta | ||||
| 2019 | "Forty Names" | PN Review | |||
| 2020 | Magma | ||||
| 2021 | "Pages 22–29" an excerpt from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure | Poetry London | |||
| 2022 | "Up Late" | Granta | |||
| 2023 | Malika Booker | "Libation" | Poetry Review | [34] |