Sarah Howe wins Forward prize for best poetry collection with 'Foretokens'
Poet Sarah Howe has won the Forward prize for best collection, one of the UK's most prestigious poetry awards, for Foretokens, a book about new parenthood, the death of her father and her mother's early life in Hong Kong. The prize is worth £10,000.
Sarah Howe was named winner of the Forward prize for best collection at a ceremony hosted by poet Joelle Taylor at London's Southbank Centre. The award, one of the most important in British poetry, comes with £10,000.
Foretokens is Howe's second collection and arrives a decade after her debut, Loop of Jade, became the first debut to win the TS Eliot prize. Born in Hong Kong to an English father and a Chinese mother, Howe explores genetics, time, becoming a parent and her mother's hidden history in Hong Kong. The book was also shortlisted for the 2025 TS Eliot prize.
The Forward prizes' co-executive director, Mónica Parle, called it "an exceptional collection" that, after ten years in the making, still bears "distinct relevance to our time".
Lisbon-based poet Nur Turkmani, who grew up in Beirut, won the £5,000 prize for best first collection with October, poems written mostly in Beirut during years of protests, economic collapse, a port explosion and war. Dublin-born Tara Bergin won best single poem for The Fear.