The Jerwood Prize for Best First 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 Jerwood Prize nominees for best first collection, 2026.
From the publisher:
Shortlisted for the 2026 Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection.October in Lebanon is heavy with memory. The euphoria of the 2019 revolution feels far away, its anniversaries marked by crisis, war and the genocide in Gaza.Across multiple…
From the publisher:
While newly married, with the couple expecting their first child, Catherine Redford’s wife was tragically diagnosed with a terminal illness. The Way the Water Held Me is a mesmeric plunge into the caring, grief, loss and love…
From the publisher:
Ground Provisions grapples with notions of heritage and inheritance: what we are given, what is taken away or lost, how we sustain life, and how we make provisions between generations.
From the publisher:
In her debut collection, Even the Trees, Roshni Gallagher asks what can be seen, named, or remembered. From Scotland to Guyana, the poems explore the porous boundary between the past and the present, and how ecological landscapes and…
From the publisher:
In her unflinching and tenderly obsessive collection, Sculling, poet Sophie Dumont explores a deeply personal relationship to the River Avon, as she circles the curses that unravel from a canoe club. At the age of sixteen, Sophie Dumont…
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