Raymond Antrobus and Zoë McWhinney have been shortlisted in the performance poem category for the 2025 Forward prizes, in the first year the prize has been open to poems performed in British Sign Language.

Juana Adcock (I Sugar the Bones), Leo Boix (Southernmost: Sonnets), Niall Campbell (The Island in the Sound), Vidyan Ravinthiran (Avidya), and Karen Sodie (Wellwater) are the five shortlisted poets for this year ‘s £10,000 Forward prize for best collection.

The five contenders for the £5,000 Jerwood prize for best first collection are Sarah Ghazal Ali (Theophanies), Isabell Baafi (Chaotic Good), Catherine-Esther Cowie (Heirloom),  Desree (Altar), and Michael Mullen (Goonie).

Poet laureate Simon Armitage is among the five shortlisted for best written single poem. The five are: Abeer Ameer (At least’), Simon Armitage (‘Birds of the Arctic’), Tom Branfoot (‘A Parliament of Jets’), Tim Tim Cheng (‘Girl Ghosts’), and Nick Makoha (‘Codex©’).

The five contenders for best performed single poem are: Raymond Antrobus (‘Dynamic Disks, 1933’), Bella Cox (‘Sikiliza’), Griot Gabriel (‘Where I’m From’), Joshua Idehen (‘The World According to Your Mum Doing the Washing’), Zoe McWhinney (‘The portrait and the skylight’).

This year’s prize judges are author Sarah Hall, chair, with poets Lisa Kelly, Hannah Lavery, Sean O’Brien and Rommi Smith.

One of the judges, Sean O'Brien, said: "What was I looking for among the Forward Prize entries? Imagination, formal skill, music, commitment to language. I hoped to encounter poems able to resist the lure of attitudinising and merely immediate relevance. I hoped to find poems that accept the obligation of the poet to make work that endures and renews itself for successive readers and listeners. I’m delighted to say that such work was there to be found, both among established poets and newcomers."

Read more details about all the contenders