 Good evening. Welcome everybody and a special welcome to our friends and partners in the Living Knowledge Network across the UK. My name is Jamie Andrews. I'm the lead here at the British Library for our cultural programming and our learning and education work. I'm delighted, we're all delighted to welcome the forward prizes for poetry to the British Library for the 2020 prize giving ceremony. You can probably see I'm here in the British Library in London. We are reopening our sites here in London and the north of England and here in St Pancras many of our reading rooms and our exhibitions are now open and our major new show Unfinished Business, The Fight for Women's Rights launched just this Friday. But for obvious reasons our cultural events programming has gone digital this year and that's of course different. We will miss the warmth of all your human presence and company and energy but it's by no means a diminution. Indeed it's quite the opposite. Already with our digital online program we found that we're reaching more people than ever we could in a physical theatre reaching more people from across more of the UK and in fact even further beyond and in a more open and I think inclusive way. So those circumstances have forced our hand. We hope, we truly believe that this year's forward prizes will be the biggest and the best yet. Forward prizes were founded by William Seacart. They are run by the Forward Arts Foundation and they are of course the most prestigious awards for new poetry published in the UK and Ireland. And each year the prizes and the wonderful forward book of poetry you can see here they distill and celebrate the best of the year's poetry for us. It's actually the first year that the library has partnered with Forward and we're delighted to have done so and I'd just like to thank everyone who's made this event happen. My colleagues here at the library in our cultural events team, thanks to our friends and our partners at the Forward Arts Foundation, thanks to all the judges and an especially big thank you to all the poets reading tonight for your contributions that we've digitally stitched together in a way that I hope is worthy of the way that you bring words and ideas together so beautifully in your shortlisted works. Have a wonderful evening. I know you will. And now with great pleasure I'll hand over to the founder of the Forward Prizes William Seacart. Thank you Jamie and thank you to the British Library for being our partner and the host for this year's Forward Prizes for Poetry. I say prizes because we've got three prizes, the best single poem, the best first collection and the best collection in this our 29th year. Before we start just a few thank yous, first of all to bookmark content, formally forward publishing who've been sponsoring the prize since its inception. That's 29 years of art sponsorship, something that happens very rarely in life and we continue to be immensely grateful. We're also grateful to the late Felix Dennis whose estate continues to sponsor the best first collection prize and it's very generous of them. Thank you very very much. Most of all though I need to thank our judges the chair Alexandra Harris, the poets Kim Moore, Roger Robinson, David Weeter and writer and journalist Leif Abothnott. Now over to you the chair of our judges Alexandra. Hello it's really thrilling to be here at the culmination of a long and absorbing judging process and to have the chance to celebrate with all the digital sparkle we can muster the amazing richness and vitality of this year's forward shortlisted poetry. I knew that it was going to be a major experience reading several hundred poetry collections back to back. I didn't know of course that we'd be reading day in day out as the world changed utterly around us and as I sat in my chair I I did sometimes think should I be out doing something else and then magic would happen on the page and I'd hear the voices of the poets sounding through time and and space and and be certain all over again about the power of literature in the hardest times its capacity to carve out alternative spaces of concentration and imagination. It's way of helping us to unpick the baffling reconfigurations of of the present so I'm so glad that we were able to carry on especially since many of the books have not had or the usual fanfare that comes with book launch parties and festivals. Thanks to the irrepressible conviction of Susanna Herbert and the tremendous dedication and foresight of Holly Hopkins the books arrived on judges doorsteps 50 60 at a time judging meetings went ahead on zoom and we were able to host a series of gripping meet the poet interviews. We read poetry of exquisite stillness and reflection and poetry that seemed to sound out like a chorus charged with the rhythms of common feeling. We were drawn to focused craftsmanship and startles by how often that kind of carefulness cohabited with wild energies and and force fields that knocked us straight off the beaten path. We all had different passions as judges and bought different bodies of knowledge and experience and of course that's just what made our discussions so exhilarating. Everything on these short lists was debated and fought for. I really want to thank my fellow judges for their feats of rereading and weighing up and for the eloquence with which they advocated what mattered to them. Now let me introduce first of all the short list for the forward prize for best single poem 2020. Each of the poems you're about to hear establishes its own intricate dynamics and I hope you'll enjoy the sheer range. Fiona Benson bends down to talk to a cockroach on equal terms in her poem Mama Cockroach I Love You which appeared in Poetry London. Malika Booker gauges the unpredictable strength of inner storm winds in a poem about love and care The Little Miracles published by Magma. Reggie Claire's Uncertainties was published in Mislexia and it won the Poetry Book Society's Women's Poetry Competition. It's a sustained questionnaire that can never finally be answered. Noctan for a Moving Train published by The Poetry Review is a haunting piece of work from Belarusian writer Valzina Mort with a political charge or the stronger for its mutedness and Sarah Zhang mixes comedy absurdity disgust and tenderness in dick pics which appeared in the moth. My name's Fiona Benson and this poem is called Mama Cockroach I Love You it's part of a longer sequence of insect poems recorded for Arts and Culture at the University of Exeter as part of an audio pamphlet. Mama Cockroach I Love You because you cozy with the aunties in your reeking slums and are intimate and sweet. Because you begrudge no one a meal but ooze a fecal trail to lead your commune to its source like a dirty bee. Because you are joyfully promiscuous. Because you pouch your young and hide them in the sweaty creases of the house near superating food so they'll hatch to a feast. Or keep your eggs with you in a special purse shaped like a kidney bean and clutch them fast. Or reinsert them into your abdomen and womb them there. Or carry them as yolks and give live birth. Then feed your pale brood secretions from your anus or your armpit glands like milk or deep in the flesh of a rotten log pass them a bolus of predigested food mouth to mouth. Because you suffer your young to swarm upon your back and do not flinch or buck them off but carry them like a human playing horsey with her children down on hands and knees decrying the swag of her own loose flesh. Because you twirl your antennae gracefully to test your crawl space. Because strokenly you caress your offsprings backs and gentle them with pretty pheromones and chirps. Because you purr when your young stroke your face. Because you would leave your body for your offspring to dine upon all the liquors and gravy of the obscene world. Your work in the crannies delivered to the living. Because you are despite all rumours mortal. And what if you are crushed before your eggs can be delivered. What if your sisters drive you hissing out. What if your kitchen is fumigated. What if the mongoose the lizard the snake a muscular tongue prying at the warm and greasy interstices of your stubborn occupancy takes you in its mouth. Someone must care for the dirt. My name is Malika Booker and this poem is called The Little Miracles. Since I found mother collapsed on the kitchen floor we siblings have become blindfolded mules harvested to carts filled with strain lumbering through a relentless storm wanting to make our mother walk on her own again wanting to rest our palms on her left leg and arm like Jesus but constellations do not gather like leaves in a teacup so what miracle of what blood of what feeble wishes do we pray happy no nails hammer plywood building a coffin to house her dead weight happy her journey crawls as we her children hold out like drought holds out for rain learning what it is like to begin again start with the the the dog the cat the date the ear the stroke the brain the fenced in walls she struggles to this mantle brick on brick she cannot break this be reason watching her left hand in her lap a useless echo we chew bitter bush swallow our howling storm reluctantly splintering under the strain of our mother's alien bed rest we smile at each of our feats right hand brushing her teeth in late evening head able to lift without the aid of a neck brace her offspring's names Malika philip and quacy our chance repeated over and over as if staking us children as her life's work her blessings showing how much we are loved the day she sings walk with me oh my lord over and over walk with me oh my lord through the darkest night and i sing with her my notes flat to her soprano just as you change the wind and walked upon the sea conquer my living lord the storm that threatens me and we sing and sing until she says malice please stop the cat wailing before your voice make rain fall and look how the weather nice outside air then we laugh and laugh until almost giddy our mood light momentarily in this sterile room where each spoonful of pureed food slipped into her mouth like a tender offering takes us a step away from a cheating from the feeding tubes and we're so thankful for each miniscule miracle my name is Reggie Claire the following is an extract from the beginning of uncertainties the poem is written in multiple choice format and i've dedicated it to my sister Marian Vera who died three years ago almost to the day of this recording uncertainties my sister once gave me a an ultramarine silk scarf b a star-shaped candlestick of clear glass c a guardian angel made from clay and driftwood my sister loved a her family b her partner c kayaks my sister's partner loved her his family kayaks my sister and her partner loved adventure sports water to sea my sister and her partner had been on sea kayaking trips before we're familiar with that coastline we're offered a guided tour trusted their abilities and experience my sister sent her children a whatsapp message saying how excited she was about that day's 10 kilometer kayaking trip a picture of the mirror smooth sea a selfie in a swim vest emojis of dolphins my sister's postcard to our parents was sent before the kayaking trip was sent by hotel staff after the kayaking trip arrived 10 days after the kayaking trip before her funeral my sister died on friday 13th on saturday 14th my sister's partner did not die on friday 13th on saturday 14th my sister died at sea alone soon after sunset in a storm in the dark in a storm at dawn after a storm in sunlight on the morning after a storm my sister's partner clung to his kayak at sea alone from sunset to fall stone throughout the storm from sunset to sunrise throughout the storm and the calm hours beyond from sunset to sunlight morning throughout the storm and the calm hours beyond my sister died because she and her partner had spent time on a series of beaches along the coast picnicking shell gathering sunbathing resting she and her partner had spent time exploring a disused submarine tunnel under the cliffs she was afraid of the dark inside the tunnel and so she sang seated in her kayak as a partner listened sang her heart out for the soaring echo of it and the echo could not bear to lose her and her voice my name is valgena mort and i'm reading my poem nocturne for a moving train the trees i've glimpsed from the window of a night train were the saddest trees they seemed about to speak then vanished like soldiers the hostesses handed out starched linens for snow passengers bent over small icons of sandwiches in a tall glass a spoon mixed sugar into coffee banging its silver face against the facets the window reflected back a figure struggling with white sheets the posts with names of towns promised a possibility of words for what flew by in lit up windows people seem to move as if performing surgery on tables chestnut parks side the size of creatures capable of speech radiation and the etymology of soil directed into the future prepared a thesis of the new origins of old roots on secret disfiguring missions of misspellings on the shocking betrayal of apples on the uncompromised loyalty of cesium my childish voice my hands my feet all my things that live on the edges of me shna the chestnut parks i about to speak but now they vanished i was extracted from my apartment block chained to the earth with iron playgrounds where iron swings rose like oil wells i was extracted before i could take a language out of air with my childish feet i was extracted by beaks storks cranes see the conductor punching out eyes of sleeping passengers what is it about my face that turns into a document into a ticket stretched out by a neck why does unfolding this starched bedding feel like skinning someone invisible why can the spoons head down in glasses stop screaming the chestnuts i about to speak my name is sarah ime tiang and i'm going to be reading dick pics two dicks sitting in my daughter's inbox like men without hats waiting for any door to open citing a stranger's penis used to be rare remember raincoats like a flash of lightning like a scratch and wind ticket sometimes glittering knockoff watches sometimes a soul flapping penis shivering in the electric air an overcooked hotdog an aborted fetus a close-up of a thumb rolled bologna on a lonely deli plate we have whole monologues for vaginas but i can only imagine a penis as silent which isn't the same as listening the lighting is never good harsh taken in haste no one ever drapes a dick in folds of linen the head never looks back one pearl earring shining instilled patients on every tunnel schoolyard crumbling brick wall a graffitied cock standing on balls pointing to the night sky like a fallen constellation women were for portraits nudes lounging stuffed into frames luminous and arch they were heads and breasts and feet and buttocks they'll never speech you must pay and cross the velvet rope to see them the penis stood alone in filthy bars and bathrooms in wooded parks the shadowed alleys whistling a moonlight tune now every penis is everywhere like posters for one act to play plastered on every telephone pole bench building on every mailbox on your kitchen chair so that you have to push through piles of them great snow drifts of penises just to reach across the room and tuck a stray hair back into your daughter's braid thank you to all the poets we've just heard thanks to Fiona Benson for those foul gravies and empathetic beauties of mama cockroach i love you to melika booker for the little miracles with its lightness and its weight and its feeling for the rhythms of care to reggae claire for the tamped down plainness and between the lines surges of doubt and grief in her multiple choice poem uncertainties thanks to valzina mort for the sleepless disquieting lullaby of her nocturne for a moving train and to sarah's yang for the baldness of her confrontation with what we keep trying not to see now over to william he'll announce the winner and the winner of the best single poem prize is melika booker with the little miracles wow thank you i cannot explain how extraordinary it is to have shared a short list with some of my favorite poets and i'm not going to lie the single poems in this category are pure fire as a poet i write to capture moments that we can miss this prize is testimony to the long journey i have made in the british poetic landscape from a little 11 year old black girl being bullied in the playground where books were my only friends to a caribbean diasporic woman writer bold and unafraid i'm a firm believer in the power of community and i'd like to take the time to thank publicly my mother clara booker boys and her sister rita charles two women who shaped me into the woman writer dreamer that i have become this poem the little miracles is the result of a collaboration with larry doubtweight a lecturing psychological interventions at the university of central Lancashire i also thank adam low and yvonne redrick for um for magma um and commissioning this poem huge thanks to bernadine everisto and root bothwick also who started off my writing career by enabling me to take part in workshops when i could not afford it thanks to to people tree press who has publishers see and understand not only my work but many other black caribbean british writers karamakarthi wolf tyambadges gelding collage susanna lane natalie tidler kwami doors mimi kovati pascal petite and bill herbert i thank you too the fellowship of the complete works carvey karnam and malikas poetry kitchen and of course my cousin's margaret bambiji and yudin charles for their faith and dedication congratulations to the other forward winners i am honored and overjoyed to have won the forward prize for best single poem thank you hi my name is roger romsson and it is my great pleasure to be introducing you to the shortlist for the philips denis prides best first collection in the forward prizes 2020 first on the list is elef frais shine darling from offered roadbooks then we have will harris rendang from grantor poetry ratio long my darling from the lions from picador nina ming your powers manolia nine arches press martha spraklin citadel from pavilion poetry the truth is is writing a book for the first time is hard it's very hard and finding audiences for that book can sometimes even be harder it's like lighting a match and then deciding to look for gas whilst walking into a headwind that's the importance of the forward prize it connects writers with readers but more importantly it starts to create confidence in the writer that their instincts are worth something and that will lead to their longevity i wish all these writers good luck and i will look out for their work in the future hi i'm elef frais and this is f***ing in corn f***ing in corn the rain is thick and there's half a rainbow over the damp beach just put your hand at my top i've walked around that local museum a hundred times and i've decided that the tiny stuffed dog labeled the smallest dog in the world is a fake kiss me in a pasty shop with all the ovens on i've had a warm new egg on a farm and thought about f***ing i've held a tiny green crab in the palm of my hand i've pulled my sleeve over my fingers and picked a nettle and held it to a boy's throat like a sword unlace my shoes in that alley and lift me gently onto the bins the bright morning sun is coming and coming and the holiday children have their yellow buckets ready do you remember what it felt like to dig a hole all day with a plastic spade just to watch it fill with sea i want it like that like water feeling its way over an edge like two bright red anemones and a rock pool tentacles waving ecstatically like the gorse has caught fire across the moors and you are the ghost of a fisherman who always hated land thank you from the other side of shooters hill you saw an ambulance speed past a row of stationary cars though at a distance you couldn't hear the siren and it looked to be moving slowly like a police car in a silent film driving slowly so as to appear at a normal speed and playback and you thought you saw the keystone cops crowded into a single car chugging along the road to your little niece's birthday party where they would fall over themselves in the heap at her doorstep and you started crying and when you arrived at my flat you told me about the ambulance and the keystone cops and started crying again i did too and i asked if everything was okay yes everything's okay you said suddenly embarrassed but wait why am i telling you this don't you dare think about using me in a poem making me into some sad female cipher in my life a series of symbolic events the ambulance representing mortality in my niece i don't know a hysterical desire for kids hey hey i said what about the keystone cops how do they fit in if i say this in a poem it isn't to defer responsibility but because i reject the possibility of narrating any life other than my own a need of voice capacious enough to be both me and not me will always clearly be me fine you said pouring us a cup of black tea once i said changing tack i was given a pellet gun for my birthday and without my knowing a friend started aiming at the passers-by or he claimed a pigeons into a neighbor called the police in his defense he asked how anyone could mistake the puck of a pellet gun for that of a real gun he sounds like a real jerk he said starting to relax to laugh you told me about a recent dream in which you were trapped in a silent film your every movement seen as slapstick no one able to hear you scream maybe we should watch some Percy Stowe i said and put on how to stop a motor car a minute long silent film featuring a car that slices a policeman in two before bouncing off another man's butt hilarious right but it stows 1908 version of the tempest that's his masterpiece he has aerial freed from the bowl of an oak tree do a curtsy she's just a child and scare off caliban by turning into a monkey how great is that but the cast you said who are they a bunch of edwardian amateur actors and enthusiasts the goat plays aerial might even have been the daughter of one she must be dead you said obviously i replied but by this stage in the evening i was tired my lips moving slowly and though i could see you in distress it was like the ambulance you saw moving slowly silently across the other side of shooters hill i do want children you said but not yet not in this world in playback i knew not only would we appear to be talking comically fast but it would be impossible to tell who was speaking i'm Rachel Long and this is hotel art Barcelona we're eating roses on a rooftop the med beneath us they serve clouds here too i say light starter wink are they fluffy or black the waiter doesn't answer every table is white except ours we sit at a naked woodblock antique there's enough of an age gap here me they have added 200 years the razor clams arrive in straight lines what's the matter we discuss kids maybe it's the wine or because my belly is beginning to push against the bones of my dress you say i don't think i'll identify with a brown sun excuse me i rise spill your sparkling water you only notice your steak contorting myself three ways in the toilet mirror i decide i won't look like this forever i don't even look like this now dessert is air from a porcelain pump what if he has your eyes i dare after another glass back in our borrowed bathroom i throw up rose foam a blade of grass who says he isn't a daughter i join you on the balcony you hold me from behind lean us over count we're as many stories up as our age gap why do we always have to shush you lift my dress i shoulder with my legs is love not this gripping a fence in the sky i'm nina mignopouls and this poem is called The Great Wall which is also the title of a movie directed by Zhang Yimou which came out in 2016 The Great Wall when Matt Damon saved china by driving his spear into the alien's mouth i was distracted by Lin Mei's long braided hair and the way she holds herself so still ready to strike down her enemies with a knife in each fist but some things are fixed in the white saviour narrative like the exotic love interest who will risk everything as ancient cities crumble around her and when you asked me what i thought afterwards in the autumn rain i wanted to say some parts were beautiful like the bogota of iridescent glass shattering into pieces of pink and blue light just as Lin Mei lets loose her arrow and also when you whispered something in my ear and i was hit by the shockwave caused by my body and your breath existing in the same moment in the same universe months later you told me you cried during rogue one the scene where two men hold each other weeping beneath the palm trees and light beams blasting the leaves apart and their hands shaking moments before a star destroying weapon obliterates this small ripped portion of universe i didn't know what to do with these face opera feelings only that i had to exit this particular narrative in which our knees are just touching and we are laughing while the city disappears around us as if we could reach back through hyperspace to touch the silver holograms of our past selves as if we could go back to some other time on some other planet before the first particles of energy let go of themselves like the thousand paper lanterns released into the sky above the great wall a thousand tiny fires trapped inside i'm marthas brackland and this is huana and bartha in therapy from citadel this is what they have learned their putative son imprisons them calls them mad instructs the wardens to hurt and hold them some days he doesn't exist at all and they are free to go out to go into the center of town without a pram to read books and eat a saucer of olives the sun is too big for a pram surely is almost a man time is complicated especially at these distances the crackling string of this makeshift telephone between two empty tins of cathedral stretches five centuries and is desperate to forget but they too must stay on the line must work together if they are to escape and write this they are in the bland room above the prep at bishop gate trying to understand the walls of the mind are deep and moted they had six children in nine years they have no children will harris's rendang is a book of connectedness but yet unconnectedness it's as if the strange things that happen during his daily life make comments about his cultural connection or disconnection reach along my darling from the lions is a book that trips in melancholy it wrongs you with every turn and makes you have different ideas of what a strong black woman is or can be nina mingya powers is a interesting absorption of culture from popular media but in a spare nearly zen-like frame of poems citadel Martha Spratland is able to jump between histories and find alignments and help us to understand suffering over history shine darling by Ella Freyres it's a book that sometimes when you read it you think oh you're not supposed to save that in current company but that makes it bristle with the energy of the everyday also put into strong form in judging the best first collection we were faced with an incredibly strong group of writers who seemed seasoned way beyond the experience of a first book which made it incredibly hard to make decisions it seems that with these first collections that the future of poetry seems very strong indeed but what was also quite impressive is how seasoned these writers seem how they were able to put little details into their work to allow us to understand that they are really really really good writers even from a first book far better from most first books I've read I wish all these writers the best of luck and I'm convinced that I will see their work over the next decades and the winner of the Felix Dennis Prize for the best first collection is Will Harris for Rendang hello again I've tried to record this several times now and it's a hard thing to be doing and so strange thing and sorry if I sound awkward it's not because I'm not grateful it's because I'm kind of overwhelmed and don't really know what to say and I'm not going to try and give a speech for anything I just want to I'm just going to thank a few people quickly like the judges thank you for engaging the work I'm really proud to be here alongside Ella, Rachel, Nina and Martha whose books I think are genuinely amazing and exciting thank you to all the people who make the book happen namely specifically Rachel Allen who edited it and shaped it thank you to Eleanor, Carr and Sam and everyone at Granta for their support and work on it as well thank you also to Eleanor Nelson who was my first editor and believed in my work when I really didn't thank you to Nikki Chang for her support over the last few years thank you to Bernardine Everisto, Natalie Titler and the whole Complete Works family for supporting me and changing my relationship to writing making me feel less lonely as a writer and thank you to Sarah Howe and Sandeep Parma among who among many others have done so much to not just mentor and support writers but to change the critical culture around work by poets of color in this country and finally thank you to my parents for understanding and Kusayan Kalyan I'm just going to read a short poem oh no I'm going to read a short little extract from a poem called all the birds your husband one day I heard a woman started writing poems to a friend with cancer not to comfort but to mock him and when he died she wrote poems to his wife mocked her too she told her that the birds in her garden were him her husband so she would sit outside and feed them stale crumbs until they flapped away and then she raged strange things started happening her lights blue strings snapped on an unused harp she shouted at the new birds one of them flew straight into her room shitting screaming what of the poet she scolded the wife in her most rocking poem yet no all the birds your husband now is the time for me to tell you about the forward e-magazine creative critics 2020 award the prizes run in partnership with the English and media center and invite 16 to 19 year olds to read poems shortlisted for the forward prizes and then write a creative response to them in the form of a poem along with a short reflective commentary this year's prizes were judged by poet and forward prizes alumni Julia Copas who said I was deeply impressed not only by the ingenuity and range of the poems but by the erudition of the accompanying commentaries in the best entries the commentaries shed light on both the model poems and the newly minted response the winner of with the 200 pound prize is Joyce Chen from Westminster school for cuttle fishing off the coast of Hong Kong inspired by a single stanza in will harris's holy man the two runner-ups with 50 pound prizes are Ariba Said from London Academy of Excellence for her untitled poem beginning what the hell I still play hide-and-seek written in response to Caroline Bird's rookie and Katie Capatrick from Hills Road sixth form college in Cambridge for things I'm freezing to come back to later based on vicky fevers the larder highly commended poems were Kid by Luke Timworth from Little Heath School Tilehurst a second evening by Ikara Nassim from Lord's Wood Girl School and sixth form centre in Birmingham pastime by Tarani Suresh from the Royal Latin School in Buckingham and Vilnius by Yale Katz from Habadasha Ask schools for girls in Elstree it's time for me to introduce the shortlist for best collection I think as judges we all wished we could shortlist about 20 books and howled quietly at the loss of a few very ardently loved ones along the way but were very proud indeed of our shortlist and of the winner we talked a lot in the meetings about the shape of these books as holes about the way trajectories were held and ideas bought into land about how some point of light at the beginning might shine out towards the end we talked about the way these poets got hold of the past and came with utterly modern voices to invent the future you'll have to read the full collections to enjoy all this for yourselves but we're going to hear from each poet now luring or shocking or bewitching us with a single poem Caroline Bird is nominated for the air year published by Carcannet it's a work of phenomenal energy and economy surrealist refractions and diversions aerial dances above deep wells of love and despair postcolonial love poem is a magnificent second collection from Natalie Diaz and it's published in the uk by Faber it's giant in its emotional range and political engagement and yet it's so sensuous and intimate in its scale and touch i want i want by vicky fever is published by cape we deeply admired its tight sprung lyrics that burst upon the mind it's a book about childhood midlife and age about all the ages of women it's a fierce and loving book about family art and ambition David Morley's fury is published by carcannet sonnets meet pantoums in this festival of loves and voices the air is full of birds fury meets gentleness and every poem is deeply interested in what language makes of us tiger girl by pascal petit is published by blood axe it pushes deep into the wilder places of the forest and the human heart it shimmers with the colors of bee eaters and flycatchers and rages at the darker regions of environmental exploitation and quality i think we've got a major treat in store as we listen to them read hello my name is caroline bird and i'm going to read my palm dive bar this came from a commission about gay pride um which i thought i would feel simple about because i've known i was gay since i was 13 but gay pride is different from everyday pride in the way that it's it's complicated because it's a counter emotion to being told to feel ashamed and so it's got hurt inside it as well and anger and sadness and shame paradoxically and it's as if every sequin represents the amount of darkness that it's had to overcome and we're going to need billions of sequins forever i was researching this club called the gateways which was one of the few places that lesbians could meet safely in London in the 1930s and 40s and the description of it on wikipedia is through a green door down a steep flight of stairs into a windowless cellar and i thought it was rare that the literal description of a place is also a metaphor for how it made you feel dive bar through a red door down a steep flight of stairs into a windowless cellar with sweating walls an ingenue in a smoking jacket sits astride a piano as a host of swaying women sing your secrets safe with me and one invites you into the privacy of a kiss all these dark clandestine places and you find yourself imagining a very tiny woman walking straight into her mouth through a red door down a steep flight of throat into a windowless cell with breathing walls an ingenue in a smoke jacket sits astride a piano as a host of swallowed women sing your secrets in a safe the barmaid shakes a custom cocktail she calls a private kiss all these dark half-eaten faces and you find yourself imagining a tiny tiny woman walking straight into her mouth through a red breath down a dark thought into a swallowed sense with shrinking walls an innuendo in stomach acid slops astride a piano as a host of silent passions mouth your secret is yourself inside the belly of the world all these dark dissolving spaces and you find yourself imagining a windowless woman breaking walls down in herself sprinting up the shrinking halls and up contracting corridors and up the choking fits of hard stairs through dark thoughts and dead laws through the red door as it swallows shut behind you now you're spat out on the pavement with the sun just coming out i'm Natalie Diaz and i'm reading Waste and Sway i never meant to break but streetlights dressed her gold the curve and curve of her shoulders the hum and hive of them moon glossed pillory of them nearly felled me to my knees how can i tell you the amber of her the body of honey i took it in my hands oh city where hands turned holy her city where my hands went undone gone to ravel to silhouette to miles at the mercy of the pale of her hips hips that in that early night to light lit up to shining sweet electricus to luminous and lamp were eight to drink i did till drunk were in her rocked the dark zikmund her by then a cathedral tower one breast rose window one breast room of alchemists where from her came a tolling the music of yoke and crown of waste and sway wanting her was so close to prayer i should not but it was july and in a city where desire means upstairs we can break each other open the single blessing i had to give was mouth so gave and gave i did every night has a woman for temptation every city has a fable for fruit like in the castle gardens where jackdaws waited glazied along the walls for a taste of new of figs unsweet yet yet barrel bright enough for wonder not jackdaw but not different i how i destroy myself on even the least of the sweetest things the salt of her burned not long on my tongue but like stars i never meant to break but love the hymn and bells of her even now there are nights i climb the narrow stairway to an apartment at rad shanny square where a door opens to a room and the shadowed fig of her mouth cleaved sweet open and in me ringing my name is vicky fever and my poem is called the surgeon's widow she dug all night in the company of moths drawn from the dark to the bright beam of her torch recovering first his skull last the phalanges of his toes finally at dawn her bag full she carried her husband home she laid his bones damp and cold from the grave on a rug by the fire then found a drill pliers and a coil of wire aided by the diagrams in his anatomy books she reassembled his gaunt frame the night of their wedding he swung her off her feet waltzing her from room to room before carrying her up to bed now she held him and danced the same route stumbling almost falling on the stairs once they'd made love in the bath now lifting him gently into the tub she washed him like a muddy child scrubbing with a nail brush at green and amber stains on his porous bones his hand she left till last soaping fingers famous for their delicate skill with her fingers crooked and clumsy with arthritis finally rinsing off gray suds she dried him with a warm towel she slapped as before his death his knees slotted into the crook of her knees her buttocks cradled by his pelvis her head on the pillow beside his dreaming of his breath on her neck hello my name's david moorley and this poem is called romany wounds me the place names that i've mentioned of the poem horse mondan kenlaworth derham applebee stow in the world are all traditional gypsy traveller horse fairs romany wounds me is dedicated to the writer damien labar wherever i travel romany wounds me as i held into the horse fair at stow in the world between cotswold chint shops and the roving road hgv's hunkered after our wagons on the fosway cursing us with airbricks and grunting gear ships at kenlaworth fair with its tail backs to longbridge roundabout vado's bottlenecked behind ponies from persia rocks rammed on the verges of all the villages between by neighborhood watches with the policemen's nod at darham fair i crowbarred those stern stones from the wayside and flattened fat molehills under by four by four and snored under the stars of headlights flying across the bypass and slung my kettle above an illegal blaze a gressin hall swatham and peter bro the pubs were barred to me what do the gentiles want these polite people who curses were Romanian or worse than a copper pulls us over and barks for passports mate i can from rotherham laughs one gypsy although it's foreign country around these parts and as we sleep europe drifts away across the sea the kling net of england closes our caravans are ships with their engines flooded our lives are drowning strange people the english they say this land is ours but they don't rove beyond their commutes or school runs imagine the police rocking up at their caravan sites meanwhile england keeps on traveling always traveling backwards in my dream our flotilla of caravans set sail from dovis chalk shore as though the little boats of dunkirk were our own gypsy vados as though we were machine gunned by our own spitfires and those brothers on the beach were our own strafed kin which we were when we were borderless and one between the horse fares of horse monden and apple bay at all the stopping places where i wake and in every face i see wherever i travel romany wounds me i'm pascalpiti and i'm going to read one poem from tiger girl jungle outlet what you didn't tell me is how poachers cut off their claws and break bones in one wing so they can't perch or fly that their eyes are sold as poojas boiled in broth so herdsmen can see in the dark you didn't say how sorcerers keep their skulls their barred feathers their livers and hearts or how they drink their blood and tears you didn't mention how a tortured owl will speak like a young girl to reveal where treasure is buried my kind granny who took me in when i was homeless who sat down this very evening after i had gone to bed and wrote mother a stern letter telling her that she must take me back it doesn't matter where paris wales timbuktu no more excuses you are tired and here your slanted writing is almost illegible but what i think it says is that you cannot look after a teenage owlet you use your favorite pet name i've never spoken of this before i call it up my gullet from the pit at the bottom of my 13th year along with my crushed bones my stolen blood and i spit it out through my torn off beak in language that passes for human congratulations to all five poets and thank you for reading from five phenomenal collections well the decision for the judges here was really really hard i can tell you uh we ran out of time and had to go into overtime in our debating as soon as we managed to put aside one of these books we missed it and someone would say please please can we have it back again um so all these books we deeply admire we know they will last and we urge you to read and reread them our shortlisted poets caroline bird for the exuberant courageous the air year nasally dears for post-colonial love poem with all its suppleness and ardency vicky fever for i want i want a bold surprising book that climbs ladders to the sky david moorley for fury which controls its furies with ever-inventive craftsmanship and pascal petite for the alarming mythic beautiful tiger girl and the winner of the forward prize for the best collection of poetry in 2020 is caroline bird for the air year thank you um this is much more surreal than any poem i've ever written and i'm pretty sure i'm going to wake up any minute but before i do thank you so much thank you to the forward thank you to the judges thank you to car connect my publisher and in particular michael smith for everything for for answering that letter that i wrote to him when i was 14 and continuing to support me ever since thank you to my parents for um valiantly putting up with every poem that i thrust into their faces when i was a teenager and letting me believe that being a poet was a thing that i could do and thank you to david moorley and pascal petite and vicky fever and nathalie dias for being literally some of my favorite poets in the whole world and it has been a profound joy and honor to have been shortlisted alongside them um thank you uh to arvin i remember going on my first arvin course when i was 13 everything happened when i was 13 probably and um uh picking books off the shelves and thinking i can't believe there's so much poetry in the world i have all of this rage and lust and bitterness and joy and hope and regret available to me in these books and and it's not going to lie to me and the poetry world has always been a world that i am happy to be alive in you know unlike that one and it's always made sense to me because it doesn't have to make sense and i'm incredibly grateful to be part of that world and that community so thank you and um thank you to my partner eliza who i love so much and this book is full of love as well as being full of all the other emotions as well um it's very personal i can't i can't believe people are reading it what are you doing um i'm going to read uh the first part of the book it's called midair thank you there is a corner of the city where the air is soft resin step in and it hardens around you suspended in amber we made the mistake of kissing there i mean here our mouths midway across the same inhalation like robbers mid leap between rooftops if kisses were scored by composers they placed the breath on the upbeat oh god music preceded by midair when the baton lifts the orchestra tightens and before the one two three and the sunlight is meticulous and the river holds its tongue and your silver earring steals like an aerialist hoop caught midspin a note almost sung locked in the amber of the and we just want to land or be landed on well that concludes this year's forward prizes for poetry i'd just like to thank again the british library for hosting us all our judges for their hard work and the wonderful shortlisted poets who you heard reading their work this evening every one of them i hope will feel that they're a winner don't forget that the forward book of poetry is out and please go out and buy it and look forward fingers cross that this time next year we'll all be seeing each other again in person good night