The Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection 2026
Selected by the Bookshop
The Forward Prizes for Poetry are the most influential awards for new poetry in the UK and Ireland, honouring fresh voices alongside internationally established names. Here are the nominees for best collection, 2026.
From the publisher:
A landmark new collection from T. S. Eliot Prize-winner Sarah Howe, navigating the complex inheritance of family, language and colonialism – and forming a portrait of a mother in search of her past and herself.Unearthed in a…
From the publisher:
POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICEThe third collection from T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet, essayist and editor Karen McCarthy Woolf'A work of intense epiphany' ROGER ROBINSON'Unsafe will stay with me forever' SAFIA ELHILLO'As urgent as it is…
From the publisher:
Egrets, While War is a lyric field guide to grief and resilience, where attention becomes a form of devotion, and intimacy, a quiet resistance. …
From the publisher:
In Bycatch, a new collection by the Ted Hughes Prize shortlisted-poet Caroline Smith, the poems ask where personhood is when memory and language are gone. They capture the faltering years of a life gradually scraped bare by the deep-sea…
From the publisher:
The Forward Prize 2026 NomineeA Poetry Book Society RecommendationKeith Jarrett's dazzlingly lyrical new collection asks how we process violence when it's lionised in our language, on city street signs, in the edicts of a vengeful god. Its…
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