Liz Berry

Liz Berry

Liz Berry (b. 1980, Black Country) won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2018 with ‘The Republic of Motherhood’, having previously won Best First Collection in 2014 for her Chatto debut Black Country. ‘Highbury Park’ describes an overgrown park in Birmingham where Berry went on long walks with her newborn son: ‘As the spring came I felt my body being brought slowly back to life by it. I thought often of Highbury’s nighttime lovers (I was the day shift) and how the pleasure of our experiences and longings might intertwine.’

Berry’s advice to poets starting out is to ‘be tough on your poems but kind to yourself… Listen to poems being spoken, let their electricity light you’. Berry’s unforgettable final image of the lover taken by the wind — ‘stripped and blown, / then jilted dazzling in the arms of the trees’ — is surely a prime example of that illuminating electricity.

Forward Prizes History:

• 2019 Forward Prizes for Best Single Poem, shortlisted for ‘Highbury Park’ (Wild Court)
• 2018 Forward Prizes for Best Single Poem, winner for ‘The Republic of Motherhood’ (Granta)
• 2014 Forward Prizes for Best First Collection, winner for Black Country (Chatto & Windus)