From real-time responses to Gaza and Ukraine, to toxic landlords and the opioid epidemic; from displacement and transgenerational memory to the miners’ strike and the Met Gala, 20 poets have been shortlisted for the 2024 Forward Prizes for Poetry.
The most coveted and influential prizes for poetryin the UK and Ireland, awarded in four categories: the Forward Prize for Best Collection (£10,000), the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection (£5,000), the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem – Written (£1,000), and the Jerwood Prize for Best Single Poem – Performed (£1,000), announced this year’s shortlists at Apple and Snakes’ Jawdance event on Wednesday 17th July at Rich Mix in London.
The four Forward Prizes shortlists this year showcase the “astonishing breadth of styles and themes that contemporary poetry currently has to offer,” comments judge and writer Vanessa Kisuule. The range and versatility of form across the four categories was also noted by judge and poet Alycia Pirmohamed, who praised the hybrid forms of “prose poems, verse novels, and long poetry sequences” sharing the shortlist with works engaging in “photography and ekphrasis poetry.”
Independent presses continue to demonstrate their importance in the poetry landscape with seven out of the ten collections published by independent publishers from across the UK and Ireland. Scottish performance poetry is flourishing with three of the five poets shortlisted for the Best Single Poem – Performed (Leyla Josephine, Nasim Rebecca Asl and Michael Pedersen) based in the region, including a repeat nomination for Pederson, who was also shortlisted in the inaugural performance category last year. The new award was praised by the Guardian for bringing the energy of performance poetry “into the classical canon, holding it in parallel and capturing it for posterity.”
2024 SHORTLISTS
The Forward Prize for Best Collection
God Complex by Rachael Allen
With My Back to the World by Victoria Chang
Goodlord by Ella Frears
[…] by Fady Joudah
STRIKE by Sarah Wimbush
The Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection
I cannot be good until you say it by Sanah Ahsan
Inheritance by Jasmine Cooray
Food for the Dead by Charlotte Shevchenko Knight
The Wrong Person to Ask by Marjorie Lotfi
American Anthem by Kelly Michels
The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem – Written
‘On hearing the seismologist say there could be an 8.5R earthquake near Athens’ by Vasiliki Albedo
‘A Craft Talk on the Praxis of an August Evening’ by
Derek Chan
‘Ward of One’ by Cindy Juyong Ok
‘I Wanted To Show You A Donkey’ by Lisa Kelly
‘the only other dark skinned girl’ by Tife Kusoro
The Jerwood Prize for Best Single Poem – Performed
‘ghazal, screaming’ by Toby Campion
‘Nearly White Girl Girling on Behalf of Proximity to
Mammal’by Eve Esfandiari-Denney
‘Dear John Berger’ by Leyla Josephine
‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ by Nasim Rebecca Asl
‘What Grief Feels Like to Me’ by Michael Pedersen
