The Forward Poetry Prizes were launched in 1991 to bring the public's attention to contemporary poetry. They are the richest annual awards in the UK, with a total prize value of £16,000, to reward both established and up-and-coming poets.


Mick Imlah The Lost Leader
Kathryn Simmonds Sunday at the Skin Launderette
Don Paterson Love Poem For Natalie 'Tusja' Beridze


Sean O'Brien The Drowned Book
Daljit Nagra Look We Have Coming to Dover!
Alice Oswald Dunt


Robin Robertson Swithering (Picador)
Tishani Doshi Countries of the Body (Aark Arts)
Sean O'Brien Fantasia on a Theme of James Wright (Poetry Review)


David Harsent Legion (Faber & Faber)
Helen Farish Intimates (Jonathan Cape)
Paul Farley Liverpool Disappears for a Billionth of a Second (The North)
Kathleen Jamie The Tree House (Picador)
Leontia Flyn These Days (Jonathan Cape)
Daljit Nagra Look We Have Coming To Dover! (Poetry Review)


Ciaran Carson Breaking News (The Gallery Press)
A.B. Jackson Fire Stations (Anvil Press)
Robert Minhinnick The Fox in the National Museum of Wales (Poetry London)


Peter Porter Max is Missing (Picador)
Tom French Touching the Bones (The Gallery Press)
Mebdh McGuckian She is in the Past, She has this Grace (The Shop)


Sean O'Brien Downriver (Picador)
John Stammers The Panoramic Lounge Bar (Picador)
Ian Duhig The Lammas Hireling


Michael Donaghy Conjure (Picador)
Andrew Waterhouse In (The Rialto)
Tessa Biddington The Death of Descartes


Jo Shapcott My Life Asleep (Oxford University Press)
Nick Drake The Man in the White Suit (Bloodaxe)
Robert Minhinnick Twenty-five Laments for Iraq


Ted Hughes Birthday Letters (Faber and Faber)
Paul Farley The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You (Picador)
Sheenagh Pugh Envying Owen Beattie


Jamie McKendrick The Marble Fly (Oxford University Press)
Robin Robertson A Painted Field (Picador)
Lavinia Greenlaw A World Where News Travelled Slowly


John Fuller Stones and Fires (Chatto & Windus)
Kate Clanchy Slattern (Chatto & Windus)
Kathleen Jamie The Graduates


Sean O'Brien Ghost Train (Oxford University Press)
Jane Duran Breathe Now, Breathe (Enitharmon Press)
Jenny Joseph In Honour of Love


Alan Jenkins Harm (Chatto & Windus)
Kwame Dawes Progeny of Air (Peepal Tree)
Iain Crichton Smith Autumn

Carol Ann Duffy Mean Time (Anvil Press)
Don Paterson Nil Nil (Faber and Faber)
Vicki Feaver Judith

Thom Gunn The Man with Night Sweats (Faber and Faber)
Simon Armitage Kid (Faber and Faber)
Jackie Kay Black Bottom

For annual anthologies of the best short listed poems, and Poems of the Decade, featuring 127 poets from ten years of the Forward Poetry Prize, visit Faber and Faber