The Forward Poetry Prize is probably the most prodigious of prizes for a working poet and I have followed the short list for best collection with joy , mounting interest and some intense feeling generated by superb works of which I could not predict the winner (see my blog at this link) for I enjoyed them all so much. But then it turns out this evening was about so much more than one prize.
There was a series of prizes ending with the Forward Poetry best collection. In each section, poems were read by their poets, or on two occasions by proxy. For each of the section, the poems were read and the prize winner announced thereafter. At a couple of points, the incomparable poet Joelle Taylor must have felt the pressure and beauty of it all. Joelle twice forgot to announce Craig Charles, the Chair of this year’s judging Panel, at the end of the best poem and then the best poem in presentation readings in his role in announcing the respective winner.
Joelle Taylor
“I am single-handedly doing my bit to take the ‘competition’ out of poetry’, Joelle later joked though the exclamation that came out on stage on each occasion a person came on the stage to remind them of the error before things moved too fast under their accidentally misdirected way was a self-conscious exclamation of “Shit!”. However, no-one could have hosted us as well as Joelle, combining humour, and seriousness with intense listening allowing them to pick out chose lines from poems whose concentration of meanings flashed upon her.
There were too many wonderful poems to recount and all could have been winners. Geoff and I just experienced them. Nevertheless winners there had to be and Craig Charles did a brilliant job of praising the winner in ways that implied no disrespect to those who had not won in their shortlists. He even read a bleak poem showing his radical energy as a poet had not left him from the days of the Red Wedge collective, and after years of celebrity on the conventional media. He was a joy to hear speak.
Craig Charles
Since there had to be winners, let’s name them, where I can. The winning single poem Ward of One by Cindy Juyoung Ok, with an intense and painful grasp of the experience of male sexual and physical abuse seared in the economy of its words. Cindy wasn’t at the event. Her beautiful.poem was read by Jo Clement, perfectly. It seemed to freeze the room in understanding of the terror of unregarded and too common violence. The Jerwood best single poem as performed was a more difficult category. I loved Leyla Josephine’s Dear John Berger. I cannot remember who won though I think it may have been Nasim Rebecca Asl for another chilling poem on male sexual violence, I can’t forget though the poem by Toby Campion that resurrected the word ‘Screaming’ from the term ‘screaming queen;’ and made it live painfully – although I’m not sure audience participation was the best way to perform that.
The Felix Dennis best debut collection funded as the Jerwood prize went to Marjorie Lotfi, who read The Hebridean Crab Apple to us from her collection The Wrong Person to Ask. That lovely poem stops with me because of its concentrated beauty and reference to the experience of a migrant Iranian family. Below is Marjorie receiving her prize from its founder.
Then for main collection, each of which I have blogged upon – there is a link to the blog on each caption to the photographs below:
Fady Joudah ‘[…]’ was not present. he reads from the USA.
Victoria Chang ‘With My Back To the World’
In my blog I said: ‘PS: NOW having read all the books I had intended to predict a winner but I find myself unable to compare on one scale works of such a different nature. Any of these might win and please me though Wimbush is less innovative than the others. I vie for ‘favourite’ between Ella Frears and Fady Joudah’.
Though I did not mention Victoria Chang here, the announcement of her as the winner did not phase or surprise for this volume has such a quiet and commanding authority as poetry and is innovative in every way. Chang is a great poet without doubt. In many ways she and Joudah were always leading the board qua innovators deeply immersed in everything that makes poetry into poetry, though what a shortlist this was.
This was a superb evening. Tonight we see a performed reading of Pat Barker.
With love
Steven xxxxxxx
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