The Forward Prizes for Poetry 2025 shortlists were announced in London, UK, on Thursday, July 17, 2025. Here are the writers of African descent in the running.
The Forward Prizes for Poetry were founded by William Sieghart to celebrate excellence in poetry and increase its audience in 1992. There are four prizes on offer in the Forward Prize for Best Collection (£10,000), the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection (£5,000), the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem – Written (£1,000), and the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem – Performed (£1,000). Previous winners include Kei Miller, Danez Smith, Claudia Rankine, and Malika Booker. In 2023, Jason Allen-Paisant, Malika Booker, and Momtaza Mehri won in their categories.
The 2025 edition has a jury of award-winning writer and a two-time Booker Prize nominee, Sarah Hall, who chairs alongside poet, editor, and educator Lisa Kelly, poet and playwright Hannah Lavery, poet Sean O’Brien, and writer, performer, broadcaster, and academic Rommi Smith. They announced the shortlist in the four different categories earlier today.
The jury chair, Sarah Hall, said: “From songs to sonnets to the surreal, there’s the creative renewal of forms alongside innovation. Politics and playfulness, passion and risks. Lyricism and the subversion of languages. Indelible artefacts, kinetics, a truly extraordinary range of expressions.”
The writers of African descent who feature in three of the four categories are;
The Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection
- Ali Chaotic Good, Isabelle Baafi
- Heirloom, Catherine-Esther Cowie
- Altar, Desree
The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem – Written
- Codex©, Nick Makoha
The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem – Performed
- Dynamic Disks, Raymond Antrobus
- Where I’m From, Griot Gabriel
- Mum Does the Washing, Joshua Idehen
This year’s winners will be announced at a special ceremony at the Southbank Centre as part of the London Literature Festival at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Sunday, October 26, 2025.
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