Cane, Corn & Gully (FELIX DENNIS PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION, FORWARD PRIZE 2023, SHORTLISTED)

Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa’s debut collection of poetry starts with a quotation from Richard Ligon in 1657, ‘For what can poor people do, that are without Letters and Numbers, which is the soul of all business that is acted by Mortals, upon the Globe of this Word.’ Kinshasa asks, how does one speak outside of what is conventionally recognised as words? Might there be alternative languages? How might one recover from ‘the void of first-hand narratives from enslaved people (particularly women)’ something that will make sense to present lives?

Cowboy (FELIX DENNIS PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION, FORWARD PRIZE 2023, SHORTLISTED)

Kandace Siobhan Walker is a writer, artist and filmmaker with exceptional creative dexterity. In 2019 Walker won The Guardian’s 4th Estate BAME short story prize. In 2021 she was a recipient of the Eric Gregory Award, winner of The White Review Poet’s Prize, and in 2022, published her debut double pamphlet, Kaleido, in 2022.  

Do not be misled by preconceived ideas evoked by the quiet artwork on the cover of this, Walker’s first full collection, Cowboy. Poems shift, build and gather, some driving home their conceit, others ebbing away into the ether. This is not simple in terms of content or of theme either….

A Change in the Air (FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION 2023, SHORTLISTED)

This is Jane Clarke’s third poetry collection. Her previous work has been nominated for several poetry prizes, including being shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, awarded for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry evoking the spirit of a place. The latest collection certainly does that….

ISDAL (FELIX DENNIS PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION, FORWARD PRIZE 2023, SHORTLISTED)

With two novels, four poetry pamphlets and an Eric Gregory Award already under her belt, the stunning quality of Susannah Dickey’s debut poetry collection should come as no surprise. ISDAL starts as a scalpel-sharp critique of the true crime genre and ends unravelling tangled notions of grief, empathy, exploitation and our near-pathological need to narrativize death (and life)….

Bad Diaspora Poems (FELIX DENNIS PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION, FORWARD PRIZE 2023, SHORTLISTED)

To prefix the title of your debut Forward Prize nominated poetry collection ‘Bad’ may seem, at first, to be a brave choice. But Bad Diaspora Poems is clearly a title that encourages you to think about nuance – something which feels all the more important in a week in which Suella Braverman is having her ‘rivers of blood’ moment at the Tory party conference. ‘Diaspora’ – online definition ‘the dispersion or spread of a people from their original homeland’ – is a loaded term, so it is no wonder Momtaza Mehri wants us to think about the value judgements we might attach to it, just as she questions the ability of poetry to respond to such a topic. What does it mean to write ‘diaspora poetry’?

Bright Fear (FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION 2023, SHORTLISTED)

The title of Mary Chan’s new poetry collection, Bright Fear, is intriguing. Fear is typically described as dark—even black—moods and colours that suggest negative qualities. In what sense is fear bright then? Well, we are taken on a journey of discovery in three distinctive sections: ‘Grief Lessons’, ‘Ars Poetica’ and ‘Field Notes on a Family’….

The Ink Cloud Reader (FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION 2023, SHORTLISTED)

Kit Fan’s new collection is one that delves into the power of writing, on both the individual and collective level. Its conversation between suffering and healing is made ever more brilliant by Fan’s eloquence and linguistic dexterity. Drawing from life and lived history, the poems shift and change, touch upon love and suffering, running like the ink he so eloquently describes…

A Method, A Path (Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection, Forward Prize 2023, Shortlisted)

The Felix Dennis shortlist is drawn from first collections, previous winners include Don Paterson, Simon Armitage, Liz Berry, and Rachael Boast. What, therefore, does Rowan Evans’ first collection offer which might see the poet follow in those auspicious footprints?

The collection’s title ‘A Method, A Path’ possibly identifies its own manifesto; themes are sometimes explored across connected sequences where each poem proposes new forms with new rules….

Self-Portrait As Othello (Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023, Shortlisted)

In Jason Allen Paisant’s latest collection, Self Portrait As Othello, we see ekphrasis as the active choice of self-examination through the lens of the other. He jumps in and out of the titular painting, looking back on himself through the culture and history that shaped the connection between him and the artwork. The collection intertwines Paisant’s experiences and the fictionalised character of Othello. As Paisant travels the world, so does Othello travel in time, appearing through the collective experience of Black men finding selfhood in a society that denies their humanity….

my name is abilene (Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023, Shortlisted)

Rachael Allen describes a collection which ‘is a haunting’, whilst John Greening terms it ‘almost a verse novel’. I’m uncertain where the parameters lie, but in this Fenland Gothic tale, Elisabeth Sennit Clough (who is from that area) conveys the almost-trippy drift from the subconscious, ingrained with something painfully real. And all of it arrives with a level of formal poetic crafting which lifts this narrative into the extraordinary.