2025 Forward Prizes for Poetry Award Ceremony

The Forward Prizes serve as a beacon for poets at every stage of their careers, offering invaluable exposure and career advancement opportunities. On 26 October in the Southbank Centre as part of the London Literature Festival, at Queen Elizabeth Hall, winners of the 2025 Forward Prizes for Poetry were announced. 

Awarded in four categories; Best Collection, Best First Collection, Best Single Poem – Written and Best Single Poem -Performed, these prizes are one of the most influential international platforms for recognising and celebrating the power and diversity of contemporary poetry published in the UK and Ireland. 

Jerwood’s continued support of the Forward Prizes for Poetry over the next two years has been recognised in the naming of the category; Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection. This is a vital award for the most exciting debut poetry collection published across the preceding year. Links to the five artists shortlisted in this category can be viewed by visiting Forward Arts Foundation.

The poet, writer, and editor Isabelle Baafi was announced as the winner of the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection, with her debut Chaotic Good (Faber), which focuses on the incremental ways in which power accumulates, shifts and is relinquished within both home and community. The collection has also been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.  

Isabelle has said: “So much of being a poet happens in solitude, and although finding community through workshops, events, and development programmes can be so gratifying, there’s never any assurance that the work we put out will resonate with a wider readership. I really admire what the Forward Prizes do in championing contemporary poetry and so it’s an incredible honour to be recognised in this way.” 

For a full list of the winners announced from all categories awarded at the Forward Prizes for Poetry Award Ceremony please visit, Forward Arts Foundation.

December 4, 2025