Forward Prizes for Poetry

The winners of the Forward Prizes for Poetry 2025!

⭐ The Forward Prize for Best Collection 2025 (joint):
‘Avidyā’ by Vidyan Ravinthiran (published by Bloodaxe Books)
&
‘Wellwater’ by Karen Solie (published by Picador, Pan Macmillan)

⭐ The Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection 2025:
‘Chaotic Good’ by Isabelle Baafi (published by Faber)

⭐ The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem – Written 2025:
‘At Least’ by Abeer Ameer (published by Modron Magazine)

⭐ The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem – Performed 2025:
‘Where I’m From’ by Griot Gabriel by (originally performed at Manchester UNESCO City of Literature).

Congratulations & thanks to all the brilliant poets who read tonight.

Thanks to our supporters: the Jerwood Foundation, Arts Council England, the John Ellerman Foundation; Bloomberg Philanthropies, Cockayne Grants for the Arts, and a number of individual donors.

👉 3 days to go! 👉

Join us for Forward Prizes Ceremony 2025 on Sunday 26 October, 7pm. Live poetry, shortlist readings and prize winner announcements in four categories: Best Collection, Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection, Best Single Poem - Written, Best Single Poem - Performed.

🎟️ Tickets from £15 + fee; concessions available. Ages 16+.

See you there!

Forward Prizes Ceremony 2025 | Southbank Centre Our ticketing database will be undergoing maintenance between 10pm on Sunday 12 October and 2pm on Monday 13 October. If there’s anything we can help with, visit our help desk.

This .makoha poem shortlisted for the Forward Prize for the Best Single Poem -Written is as beautiful as it is disturbing. There’s an inevitability the speaker sets up from ‘as a desert bird is silent so was I’ which he keeps reinforcing with each further statement to achieve different emotions. ‘Maybe I’m only here to wait the way a mountain waits for the valley’ invites stillness or is it surrender? Whatever it is suggests an acceptance which is quickly unsettled by ‘the future waits for our lives to take place’ because surely there are more choices called into existence by the capacity of the animate…

We’re going to let this one marinate but it invites further engagement and we’ll happily engage and invite you to do the same😊

Last year piloted the Summit Choice Awards- 5 young poets paid to deliberate on the official shortlist and pronounce their own winners. It was a hit with the winners, hailed as ‘the people’s prize. So we are back again this year with new judges .s . All 5 have come to us through organisations and programs doing amazing work to keep poetry vibrant and necessary across the country. Shout out to of Barbican Young Poets and

Our winners will be announced on Saturday but you get to hear our judges in conversation with Magma tonight at 7.30 , here on instagram live live. Join us.