The Forward Prizes for Poetry 2021 Winners

It is our very great pleasure to confirm Luke Kennard’s Notes on the Sonnets as the winner of the Forward Prize for the best poetry collection and Poor by Caleb Femi as the winner of the Felix Dennis Prize for the best first collection.

The Forward Prize for Best Collection

Revisiting the Bard’s genius through the lens of the anxieties of modern life, Kennard’s brilliantly irreverent collection recasts Shakespeare’s sonnets in a series of piercing prose poems set in a dreary house party.

The Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection

Filled with rage, heartbreak and joy, Femi’s searing debut collection combines verse and image in a powerful and arresting portrayal of the experiences of young Black men in twenty-first-century South London.