Moore, Sy-Quia and Laird set 'benchmark of excellence' to win Forward Poetry Prizes

Poets Kim Moore, Stephanie Sy-Quia and Nick Laird have been awarded Forward Poetry Prizes for works described by the judges as setting a “benchmark of excellence”.

Announced in a ceremony held in Manchester on Monday 28th November, the £10,000 Forward Prize for Best Collection went to Kim Moore for All the Men I Never Married (Seren), the £5,000 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection went to Stephanie Sy-Quia for Amnion (Granta Poetry) and the £1,000 prize for Best Single Poem went to Nick Laird for "Up Late". 

Kim Moore’s All the Men I Never Married, which deals with experiences of everyday sexism through 48 numbered poems and a gallery of exes and significant others, was described by judge Stephen Sexton as a “tonally profound collection which is precise, careful, unfolding, whose methodical, numbered poems show us the work and process of overcoming people and encounters”. Chair of judges Fatima Bhutto found the collection “full of dangerous wit and knowing humour that speaks directly to the reader in a hugely pleasurable way.”Judge Nadine Aisha Jassat described it as “a phenomenal and powerful collection, and one I urgently want to share with everyone I know. It feels so true, precise, brilliant and layered.”

Moore said: “‘I know that poetry can be transformative because it’s changed my life, and I wanted to see if I could write poetry that might change or shift people’s ways of thinking about sexism and gender-based microaggressions. What I didn’t expect is that the writing of the book changed me – my perceptions, my understanding of sexism and its impact on me."

Judge Alice Hiller praised Sy-Quia’s Amnion for “working in crucial new territory around questions of migrations and gendered identity, both thematically, and in terms of delivery” while judge Rishi Dastidar said: “Amnion makes the blood flow faster, it is dazzling, new and exciting in the way it braids the personal with the broader context.”

Sy-Quia started writing Amnion when she was 15 and it has taken her nine years to complete. She said: “Amnion is my attempt to wrestle with the metrics for provenance and belonging. The early passages of the book are very precious to me, because they represent the oldest material: there are phrases in there which date from my teens, and I like to think that their continued inclusion in the text is a kind of loyalty to former selves.”

Nick Laird wrote his winning poem "Up Late " as an elegy to his father who died of Covid in March 2021. He said: “It has a weird real-time element to it that wouldn’t be there if I’d been able to be with my father, so it’s of the moment in that sense. It was the peculiar circumstances of the Covid pandemic, where you couldn’t be with your dying loved ones, that brought the poem about in that form.” The judges felt Laird’s poem “sincerely engaged with death, grief and the private and shared lived experience of the pandemic in ways which readers will find profoundly moving and cathartic.”

Bhutto said: “The jury this year read such an incredible selection of work, and it took six hours just to reach a shortlist. It was also tough to winnow down to one — all the shortlisted collections and poems were so accomplished and are a great testament to the radical spirit of poetry today. Etel Adnan said ‘the poem is the last place we can imagine freedom’ and it was a true pleasure spending this year reading such incredible poets. We’re proud of our final selection and the voices they celebrate.”

William Sieghart, founder of the Forward Prizes said: “We are so grateful to our thoughtful and committed jury for the 2022 Prizes. The winners and shortlists reveal a vital benchmark of excellence, a celebration of talent and innovation, and a provocation for further creative endeavour.”

At the prize ceremony the Forward Arts Foundation also announced Bernardine Evaristo and Joelle Taylor as the chairs of the prizes’ two judging panels for 2023.

The 2023 prizes will include a new category: Best Single Poem — Performed, which will sit alongside the Best Single Poem — Written category. Evaristo will chair the panel judging the collection-length entries, and Taylor will chair the panel focusing on the two single poem prizes. Other judges include Karen McCarthy Woolf and Kate Fox.

Mónica Parle, co-executive director of the Forward Arts Foundation, said: “We are ecstatic to work with such powerhouses as Bernardine Evaristo and Joelle Taylor in 2023. They’re writers whose craft and activism we deeply admire, and it feels particularly fitting as we launch a new category that seeks to rebalance historical inequities in our emphasis on written over performed poetry.

“These approaches are in constant conversation with each other. We also hope it will increase the ways poets and audiences access and engage with the prizes.”