Tara Bergin wins Forward poetry prize
Tara Bergin has won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem – Written, worth £1,000, for The Fear, originally published in The Stinging Fly. Sarah Howe’s Foretokens (Chatto & Windus) won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, receiving £10,000. Nur Turkmani’s October (Hajar Press) won the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection (£5,000), and Biff Smith won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem – Performed for Dumbarton East. The winners were announced by host Joelle Taylor and judges Sarah Moss (chair) and Michael Mullen. Bergin is an Irish poet, born in Dublin. She has published three collections of poetry with Carcanet Press: This is Yarrow, winner of the Seamus Heaney Prize for Poetry; The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx, which was shortlisted for the TS Eliot and Forward Prizes; and Savage Tales, winner of the Michael Hartnett Poetry Award 2024. Reviewing the latter for The Irish Times, Stephen Sexton…