Notes on the Sonnets took the £10,000 award for best collection, while Caleb Femi and Nicole Sealey came out on top in the other categories
Luke Kennard has won the Forward prize for best collection for his “anarchic” response to Shakespeare’s sonnets, a work which judges are predicting could “transform” students’ relationship with the Bard.
Kennard’s Notes on the Sonnets, published by small press Penned in the Margins, took the prestigious £10,000 award in London on Sunday evening, beating shortlisted poets including Kayo Chingonyi and Tishani Doshi. Notes on the Sonnets is a collection of prose poems responding to Shakespeare’s, set at an awkward house party, with a line from a sonnet introducing each poem. Judges praised the way it captures “uncomfortable elements of human interaction and the changing nature of love”.
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