Forward Prize for Poetry 2015 winners announced

In the UK, the winners of the 2015 Forward Prize for Poetry have been announced at a ceremony in London. Jamaican-born writer Claudia Rankine won the £10,000 (A$21,570) Forward Prize for the Best Poetry Collection for Citizen: An American Lyric (Penguin). Jury chair A L Kennedy said in a statement, ‘This is writing we can recommend with real urgency and joy. It’s a stylistically daring poetic project about the dehumanization of those deemed outsiders … It will, we know, raise questions about the nature, purpose and importance of poetry.’ Rankine’s collection combines poetry with documentary film scripts, essays, screen grabs and pictures and personal accounts of everyday racism. The £5000 (A$10,780) Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection was awarded to Mona Arshi for Small Hands (Liverpool University Press) and Claire Harman won the £1000 (A$2160) Forward Prize for Best Single Poem for ‘The Mighty Hudson’. The Forward Prize was launched in 1991 and aims to ‘celebrate excellence in poetry and widen its audience’.  It is open to poets who have had their work published in print in the UK and Ireland in the previous calendar year. Read more about the prize here.

Category: International news