Poet Kim Moore has been named the winner of the Best Collection prize at the Forward Poetry Prize for 2022.
All the Men I Never Married, published by independent Welsh publisher Seren Books, secured the prestigious award and £10,000 prize for the way it deals with experiences of everyday sexism through forty-eight numbered poems and a gallery of exes and significant others.
Stephen Sexton praised the book as a “tonally profound collection which is precise, careful, unfolding, whose methodical, numbered poems show us the work and process of overcoming people and encounters’ whilst the judges chair, Fatima Bhutto found the collection ‘full of dangerous wit and knowing humour that speaks directly to the reader in a hugely pleasurable way.”
Nadine Aisha Jassat described it as “a phenomenal and powerful collection, and one I urgently want to share with everyone I know. It feels so true, precise, brilliant and layered.”
The collection was named the winner from a shortlist of five collections, of which Moore’s was the only shortlisted entry from a Welsh publisher. The winners were chosen by this year’s judging panel, made up of celebrated novelist and activist Fatima Bhutto, Chair of Judges, and poets Rishi Dastidar, Alice Hiller, Nadine Aisha Jassat and Stephen Sexton. The prize for Best First Collection went to Stephanie Sy-Quia’s Amnion (Granta Poetry), while Nick Laird’s ‘Up Late’ (Granta) was named Best Single Poem.
Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection – Shortlist 2022
Pilgrim Bell (Chatto & Windus) – by Kaveh Akbar
Sonnets for Albert (Bloomsbury Poetry) – by Anthony Joseph
Cain Named the Animal (Little Brown) – by Shane McCrae
All the Men I Never Married (Seren Books) – by Kim Moore
The Illustrated Woman (Chatto & Windus) – by Helen Mort
All the Men I Never Married is available now from Seren Books.
