The winners of this year’s Forward Prizes for Poetry will be announced on 28 November 2022 at a live event at Contact, Manchester, which puts young people at the heart of their decision-making and creative practice.
This new partnership sees the Forward Prizes for Poetry looking forward to the next 30 years with a reinvigorated commitment to supporting emerging and diverse talent across the UK and Ireland as well as building diverse mass audiences for poetry.
The Forward Prizes are the most influential awards for new poetry published in the UK and Ireland, and over the last three decades have lauded some of the most recognised names in poetry including Simon Armitage, Thom Gunn, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Carol Ann Duffy, Claudia Rankine, Jackie Kay and Caleb Femi.
The Forward Prizes are distinctive for championing new voices and internationally renowned poets alike. The shortlisted poets perfectly encapsulate the Forward Poetry Prizes dual role to celebrate excellence and welcome readers into the world of contemporary poetry.
The Prizes are awarded in three categories: the Forward Prize for Best Collection (£10,000), the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection (£5,000) and the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (£1,000), and collections represent a mix of new voices and significant names.
The Forward Prizes shortlists this year highlight the work of contemporary poetry to voice and process grief, to bend and play with the language of identity, to challenge and inhabit silence and to weave politics and spirituality into ways readers can feel lived experience in powerful and engaging ways.
The Forward Poetry prize shortlists 2022 recognize works from the poetry lists from the big houses, with Chatto & Windus receiving two nominations in the Best Collection category and another in Best First Collection, whilst independent publishers continue to show their importance in the poetry landscape, particularly in their skills and support publishing emerging talent, with four out of five of the Best First Collection shortlisting. The shortlists also welcome the first shortlisting from Bloomsbury’s inaugural poetry list (overseen by editor Kayo Chingonyi who was shortlisted for A Blood Condition in 2021 Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection) with the jazz-inflected grief sonnets of Anthony Joseph’s Sonnets for Albert.
Lucy Macnab, Co-Executive Director of the Forward Arts Foundation, the charity which runs the Forward Prizes, said, ‘we view this partnership with Keisha Thompson and Contact as a significant step toward our future strategic vision: to move away from the dominance of London in the UK’s creative and cultural life; a drive toward working more inclusively with young people, emerging voices, and diverse audiences, putting them at the centre of our practice; and working with partners that put poetry at the heart of their creative offer.’ Keisha Thompson, the first practicing poet to lead a theatre as Artistic Director, adds, ‘Poetry has always been a big part of what we do at Contact and it’s going to be so important to me as I lead the theatre. Partnering with the Forward Prizes is a wonderful way to start.’
Fatima Bhutto: ‘As the Chair of the Forward Prize judges, to spend the better part of a year thinking about poetry has been an incredible gift. The collections we pored over reminded me of care and the power strangers exert over each other in so many delicate and fragile ways. We have assembled here a collection of debut writers, masters, believers and doubters, all of them innate observers of our intimate lives. Some of them you may already know, others will be a revelation.’
For further information, including interviews with the shortlisted poets, visit www.forwardartsfoundation.org Join the conversation @forwardprizes #forwardprizes.
