Okay – I finally got my copy of the Forward Prize anthology – only a week after it was posted in Cambridge! Thank you Post Office, I really am grateful.
Sharp-eyed and otherwise well-informed readers will know that the reason I’ve been sent one is that, hurrah! Me and the Dead was clearly long-listed for the Forward, and they have chosen the poem “To My Next Lover” to be in the Highly Commended section of the book.
Looking at the company in that section is all the consolation one could ever need for not being shortlisted. I haven’t had a chance to read even half of it yet, but what I have read was often remarkable. Mimi Khalvati’s long elegy for EA Markham is just tremendous.
There are poems from seven Salt collections in the Highly Commended section – as well as Sîan Hughes in the shortlist for Best First Collection (but I won’t worry about that; the Schadenfreude element is that it is actually called the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection, and who wants that). (Good of him to put up the money, of course.) So it’s great news for Salt! And of those seven, five are books I’ve read and thought were great. I won’t pick them out. It’s a really strong list.
In fact, the news seems to be that there are lots of poems in the book from lots of small presses and tiny magazines. I do think the small and indie presses are the current big news in UK poetry and it is exciting to see how much great work they’re publishing. There’s a poem from the tiny yet compelling Egg Box Publishing. There are books from CB Editions, Arrowhead, Cinnamon Press, Penned in the Margins, Tall Lighthouse. There are I think three poems from Brittle Star magazine, and one from The Wolf… It’s great to see them all making a splash.
Here’s the book: it’ll be out on October 8, National Poetry Day.
And that’s not even counting who’s going to win! We’re not really talking about that.
Baroque in Hackney 