The countdown has started for the 25th Forward prize-giving ceremony, on Tuesday 20 September at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s Southbank. Five poets are vying for the top £15,000 Forward prize for best collection -  Vahni Capildeo, Ian Duhig, Choman Hardi, Alice Oswald, and Denise Riley. There are also two other prize categories – the £5,000 Felix Dennis prize for best first collection, and the £1,000 Forward prize for best single poem. 

To mark 25 years of the Forwards, the Forward Arts Foundation is this year publishing 100 Prized Poems, a distillation of the 25 annual Forward Books of Poetry published since 1992, a series that itself highlights the works commended each year for the Forward prizes. The anthology – 100 poems by 100 poets – is a sampler of the best poems of the last quarter century. Chosen by William Sieghart, chairman of the Forward Arts Foundation, the roll call of poets includes such names as Carol Ann Duffy, Don Paterson, Derek Walcott, Kate Tempest, Kei Miller and Emily Berry.

In 1992 the jury chaired by Stephen Spender awarded the best collection prize to Thom Gunn, for The Man with Night Sweats; Simon Armitage, a young probation officer from Manchester (now Oxford professor of poetry), collected the cheque for most promising young poet; and Jackie Kay took the best single poem award. She is now Scotland’s poet laureate. Both 100 Prized Poems and this year’s Forward Book of Poetry 2017 will be published just before the Forward prize night.

This year’s judging panel is chaired by Malika Booker, and other poets include George Szirtes and Liz Berry, with singer/songwriter Tracey Thorn and Don Share, editor of Poetry magazine.

Background: Write Out Loud POTW winner in Forward prize anthology