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The Forward Book of Poetry 2024: The Best Poems from the Forward Prizes
The Forward Book of Poetry 2024 brings together the best poetry published in the British Isles over the last year, including the winners of the 2024 Forward Prizes. In showcasing the range and ambition of today’s fresh voices alongside new work by familiar names, this anthology is a perfect introduction to contemporary poetry.
The Forward Prizes are invaluable in finding the most essential, exciting voices, highlighting the contemporary poets who are at the top of their game and whose words will travel far and reach many readers.
"The Forward Prizes have established themselves as central to the literary landscape of modern Britain." Andrew Marr
"The most coveted awards in British poetry." The Daily Telegraph
The Forward Prizes are invaluable in finding the most essential, exciting voices, highlighting the contemporary poets who are at the top of their game and whose words will travel far and reach many readers.
"The Forward Prizes have established themselves as central to the literary landscape of modern Britain." Andrew Marr
"The most coveted awards in British poetry." The Daily Telegraph
- GenresPoetry
176 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 5, 2023
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537 people want to read
About the author
Various
455k books1,339 followersVarious is the correct author for any book with multiple unknown authors, and is acceptable for books with multiple known authors, especially if not all are known or the list is very long (over 50).
If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.
Note: WorldCat is an excellent resource for finding author information and contents of anthologies.
If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.
Note: WorldCat is an excellent resource for finding author information and contents of anthologies.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 23, 2024
I did like quite a few poems here but I think while this format is meant to shine a light on up and coming authors for me it really does them a disservice. From a readers perspective I found it hard to find writers individual voice. There wasn't much cohesion in how they were shown/ordered which made me feel like we were just jumping between places all the time.
June 5, 2025
realized the fun—and necessity—of earmarking poems. earmarked six. pretty ones, beautiful ones, ones that confused me but left me with a thought I couldn’t let go of, ones where “the ink-surface had turned into / a mirror” (from one of the poets’ bios).
my favorite:
Tower by Vanessa Lampert
My father took me to London
when my whole fist could fit
inside his palm.
On the tube he lifted me up
and, holding tight stepped out
from our carriage to the next
through the filthy hurtling dark
to thrill me, then did it again.
By the river he bought chestnuts
roasted on a brazier.
My red gloves swung on strings.
I looked up at the tower of him,
and grief would never dare
to touch my life.
my favorite:
Tower by Vanessa Lampert
My father took me to London
when my whole fist could fit
inside his palm.
On the tube he lifted me up
and, holding tight stepped out
from our carriage to the next
through the filthy hurtling dark
to thrill me, then did it again.
By the river he bought chestnuts
roasted on a brazier.
My red gloves swung on strings.
I looked up at the tower of him,
and grief would never dare
to touch my life.
February 13, 2024
3.5
Some of these poems are hits and others misses (one woman’s opinion)
Alto
I watch nature documentaries, cancel the doctor's, listen to Nina Simone 'til my skin turns blue.
The fair packs up for winter, I knead rosaries,
dunk paper wicks in urine with the religion of a rigged game.
Glaciers and species sink into extinction. I have appropriated loss.
Pearls running across my knuckles, mesh of a birdcage veil brushing my cheeks, I confess: when I was fourteen 1 joined the school choir to sing scales with a pretty alto.
We went swimming in our red cassocks, wet hair curling like tongues folding over crispbread. We didn't need a word for her hands pulling the white surplice over my head.
We pretended we shared the same escape routes, but loneliness was easier for her to bear than punishment.
Whenever I prayed to be discovered, she kicked me under the pews.
I don't need to wonder if she has bled as extensively as I have.
At the spring fair I will eat cotton candy, ride the bumper cars
'til I appear in a rose window. There are all kinds of altars, and there are just as many tables I won't ever name.
AJ Akoto
Daughterhood
No one had ever told her
the possibility of undaughterhood.
Or how the weight of mothers can be shrugged off. not like a coat but
like the rolling stone of a sepulchre, hard at first, then easier with the inertia, and then a last flick.
No one had told her that she could be good and undutiful at the same time.
Oh, she thought, if I ever have a daughter, I will tell her that she can be free of me.
Perhaps that way she won't want to be, but if she does, I'll know the brightness of having told her that such a wonder exists.
Tara Bergin
In hindsight it strikes me as odd that when X mistook my tenderness for sadism I didn't think 'he's misunderstood me but rather he's seen something I didn't know was there.
Penetration
Akwaeke Emezi
(…) I am so tired my friend holds me in the bathroom as i cry the next day he apologizes says he likes my name but he'll never give it to his daughter because he wants her to be strong not like me i don't tell him how little he matters how 1 have his type at home how they already raised me with blows across the face a belt in a doorway a velvet child upholstered in incoherent rage one day a coward who will break my heart asks me how ended up still so soft i tell him i am stubborn i wanted a better world a diving bell made of tender glass a better family i remembered how to be a god i give myself what I want no one raises their voice in my house no one lays their fleshy hands on me no one is cruel if they are fool enough to try then they die and what a death what a death to not be loved by me anymore the softest gate-opener i feast on torn herbs and fat gold the wet smear of a perfect yolk seeds burst purple beneath my hands a pulped satsuma bleeds dark juice into my mouth who knew i could love me so loudly who knew i would survive who knew their world meant nothing meant nothing meant nothing look when last came out i called myself free.
Elle Heedles
Rain Noise
in the courtyard. There is rain and there are stars. The rain collapses through the tannins. I follow the reflection of rain in the window of tenderness,
chase it through the trees to find someone with your particular eyelashes. I will keep everything
someone could want: the cold, shade,
the vamp that plays on the hour, this unbelievable letter.
When the swings scrape in the wrong key, it is time to go home.
I tear a name from the middle part where the ducks swim.
I have mistaken you for sky, for waterfalls, but never for an animal of stars. That is me. Echoes
from every corner. The dog
looks at me sideways. What did he make
of us that night, when I was a silver tooth, a touch in time, and you the view from the window, the grass under the needles.
All day the dog waits for a hymn from the pines.
The rain carries wishes from the sky down.
Emma Jeremy
i talk about the beach
on the beach today it's snowing and i'm asking now to be there
my skin dipping in and out of the water all cold and alive
in a way i don't feel guilty for at night i'm struggling staying in my body is difficult in my dreams i'm under tables looking up at myself eating dinner or under my own bed looking up at myself sleeping my shoes never on me
and their absence having an important meaning which is that i'm unable to stand that i'm always underneath something looking up or sitting on a ground
which is wet with not snow or sand or salt water while my real body exists somewhere else like alongside my friends sitting around a table all of them laughing because nothing's happened to them yet my body laughing because without me it can
and when my friends then stand up to leave the table they're sharing i know things are beginning to change and i know this is happening
because i recognise it as the thing i fear so i watch my friends becoming good fathers my friends building homes for themselves my friends sleeping well in large comfortable beds
while i have to climb through everything that needs to be climbed through to get back to my body which as i've said before should be on that beach
Some of these poems are hits and others misses (one woman’s opinion)
Alto
I watch nature documentaries, cancel the doctor's, listen to Nina Simone 'til my skin turns blue.
The fair packs up for winter, I knead rosaries,
dunk paper wicks in urine with the religion of a rigged game.
Glaciers and species sink into extinction. I have appropriated loss.
Pearls running across my knuckles, mesh of a birdcage veil brushing my cheeks, I confess: when I was fourteen 1 joined the school choir to sing scales with a pretty alto.
We went swimming in our red cassocks, wet hair curling like tongues folding over crispbread. We didn't need a word for her hands pulling the white surplice over my head.
We pretended we shared the same escape routes, but loneliness was easier for her to bear than punishment.
Whenever I prayed to be discovered, she kicked me under the pews.
I don't need to wonder if she has bled as extensively as I have.
At the spring fair I will eat cotton candy, ride the bumper cars
'til I appear in a rose window. There are all kinds of altars, and there are just as many tables I won't ever name.
AJ Akoto
Daughterhood
No one had ever told her
the possibility of undaughterhood.
Or how the weight of mothers can be shrugged off. not like a coat but
like the rolling stone of a sepulchre, hard at first, then easier with the inertia, and then a last flick.
No one had told her that she could be good and undutiful at the same time.
Oh, she thought, if I ever have a daughter, I will tell her that she can be free of me.
Perhaps that way she won't want to be, but if she does, I'll know the brightness of having told her that such a wonder exists.
Tara Bergin
In hindsight it strikes me as odd that when X mistook my tenderness for sadism I didn't think 'he's misunderstood me but rather he's seen something I didn't know was there.
Penetration
Akwaeke Emezi
(…) I am so tired my friend holds me in the bathroom as i cry the next day he apologizes says he likes my name but he'll never give it to his daughter because he wants her to be strong not like me i don't tell him how little he matters how 1 have his type at home how they already raised me with blows across the face a belt in a doorway a velvet child upholstered in incoherent rage one day a coward who will break my heart asks me how ended up still so soft i tell him i am stubborn i wanted a better world a diving bell made of tender glass a better family i remembered how to be a god i give myself what I want no one raises their voice in my house no one lays their fleshy hands on me no one is cruel if they are fool enough to try then they die and what a death what a death to not be loved by me anymore the softest gate-opener i feast on torn herbs and fat gold the wet smear of a perfect yolk seeds burst purple beneath my hands a pulped satsuma bleeds dark juice into my mouth who knew i could love me so loudly who knew i would survive who knew their world meant nothing meant nothing meant nothing look when last came out i called myself free.
Elle Heedles
Rain Noise
in the courtyard. There is rain and there are stars. The rain collapses through the tannins. I follow the reflection of rain in the window of tenderness,
chase it through the trees to find someone with your particular eyelashes. I will keep everything
someone could want: the cold, shade,
the vamp that plays on the hour, this unbelievable letter.
When the swings scrape in the wrong key, it is time to go home.
I tear a name from the middle part where the ducks swim.
I have mistaken you for sky, for waterfalls, but never for an animal of stars. That is me. Echoes
from every corner. The dog
looks at me sideways. What did he make
of us that night, when I was a silver tooth, a touch in time, and you the view from the window, the grass under the needles.
All day the dog waits for a hymn from the pines.
The rain carries wishes from the sky down.
Emma Jeremy
i talk about the beach
on the beach today it's snowing and i'm asking now to be there
my skin dipping in and out of the water all cold and alive
in a way i don't feel guilty for at night i'm struggling staying in my body is difficult in my dreams i'm under tables looking up at myself eating dinner or under my own bed looking up at myself sleeping my shoes never on me
and their absence having an important meaning which is that i'm unable to stand that i'm always underneath something looking up or sitting on a ground
which is wet with not snow or sand or salt water while my real body exists somewhere else like alongside my friends sitting around a table all of them laughing because nothing's happened to them yet my body laughing because without me it can
and when my friends then stand up to leave the table they're sharing i know things are beginning to change and i know this is happening
because i recognise it as the thing i fear so i watch my friends becoming good fathers my friends building homes for themselves my friends sleeping well in large comfortable beds
while i have to climb through everything that needs to be climbed through to get back to my body which as i've said before should be on that beach
June 20, 2024
It is hard to know where to begin with the annual Forward collection, always a tonic for the soul, but in an age of doom and gloom Mary Jean Chan's statement that 'to want to live' means 'To refuse to be to be a bomb shelter for your mother's / fears' seems neatly to define the courage, humour and sensual precision that unite these poems. I also loved Em Gray's 'Symbiosis' on the horse that takes the dog's scruff between its teeth - 'no liberties were taken / save a horse who wished / a moment's velvet on her grassy tongue, / an old dog's wish to float.'
December 23, 2024
really enjoyed the variation in this book. i did struggle with decoding the semantics of some of the poetry but this is not a criticism.
special mention to Knights’ ‘The Night Before My PiP Tribunal I See My Dead’, Polley’s ‘Little Things’ & Emezi’s ‘Disclosure’. oh and Mary Jean Chan’s ‘Love for the Living’!
i also found Breda Spaight’s ‘The Curse’ graphically capturing. liked the plethora of religious representation in this collection also. would defo recommend and gonna try find some more collections like this!!!
special mention to Knights’ ‘The Night Before My PiP Tribunal I See My Dead’, Polley’s ‘Little Things’ & Emezi’s ‘Disclosure’. oh and Mary Jean Chan’s ‘Love for the Living’!
i also found Breda Spaight’s ‘The Curse’ graphically capturing. liked the plethora of religious representation in this collection also. would defo recommend and gonna try find some more collections like this!!!
March 31, 2024
Un par de buenos poemas… pero en el fondo ni los ganadores me han movido de veras.
June 20, 2024
3.5 stars
September 30, 2024
Four and a half stars
Great variety of poetic styles. A good survey to what was happening over the year. A great way to find new poets.
Great variety of poetic styles. A good survey to what was happening over the year. A great way to find new poets.
December 29, 2024
This book confirmed that contemporary poetry isn’t for me. While a few poems stood out as exceptional, the collection as a whole felt underwhelming.
February 2, 2025
An excellent anthology which has something for everyone. Would recommend to all searching for a diverse range of contemporary poetry.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews