Each year we have the honour of nominating poems for the Forward Prize. It’s a difficult thing, choosing from the last two issues’ lovely and memorable poems but after some wrestling and rereading we settled on these four pieces:
‘Trouble Woman’ by Cristina J. Baptista
‘At the Airport’ by Manuel Forcana, translated from the Catalan by Anna Crow
‘Daughter in a Plastic Dinghy’ by Jacquie Wyatt
‘Chacras de Coria’ by Daniel Bennett
These are poems that I have come back to again and again—Baptista’s artful rendering of psalm six, Forcano’s aching regret at the limitations of human connection, Wyatt’s image of innocence, and Bennett’s sprawling summer day. We put them forward as representatives of two excellent issues and turn to the pleasure of reading the new submissions pouring in for a brand new issue.
— Matthew