We are pleased to announce the following poems as our nominations for the 2025 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (Written). Good Luck to all; our fingers are firmly crossed.
Skins
My mother had a handbag made
from the skin of a female cobra
her brother killed in the garden.
No rrkk-tkking Kipling mongoose
to protect her, just my fierce uncle,
bantamweight in a stained banyan
brandishing cricket bat and torch.
Rain slid off the cambered hood,
the lady’s umbrella snapped shut—
red flickered in her blank black eye
as the straight drive landed true,
the thick whip stopped mid-strike.
Her vast body, bulging coils in a bag
double-carried to the leathersmith,
who stretched it like a family fib,
stuffed venom glands with satin.
The tawny clutch appeared
on high-heeled evenings only,
slept in a nest of white tissue.
The bright pince-nez mark
watched from the laminated flap
traced by pink-fanged fingers,
each time the mouth opened
or shut with a satisfying click
the sound was a soft, hissing salute
from one bloodsport queen to another.
Natasha Gauthier is a Canadian poet and journalist living in Cardiff, where she runs Tiger Bay Poetry. She is a member of the 2024-25 Representing Wales programme. She has been published in Poetry Wales, Scintilla, Acropolis and Amphibian, among others, and won second prize in the 2024 Welshpool Open Poetry Competition.
‘Skins’ was originally published on 26 November 2024.
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When Remembering I’m More Than What Wires into Forgetting
When naked with myself, I feel where a right elbow isn’t, then is. I let my left palm guide me through the exhibition of my body. I’ve never been here before, or so it seems, as I photocopy my snapshots into my draining database. This inventory of remembering only to forget hitches my breath, so I pause for it to resume resigning me to gaps where feeling lives unfelt. I probe for a hip crevice absent to present its coy self, to climb out of numbness. The search survives surrender, as a clavicle crops up from extinct soil. As I reach across the distance into forgetting, I redeem a shoulder at the expense of an elbow. Wholeness is a concept at a remove. I’m all compromise. As I lay on the ground, gravity grounds me through planks four stories beneath, down into the Earth— where I nullify my flesh in dirt, my bones commune with roots fracturing into multiple directions. Pain pulls me closed, and I curl into nothing dimensions— knotting knees into torso, pressing into wooden panels along edges of my free-diving body retreating from contact, from the knowledge that paths to unity abound and mine just happens to be through brokenness.
At 27, verging towards a doctorate at Harvard, Elly Katz went for a mundane procedure to stabilize her neck. Somehow, she survived what doctors surmised was unsurvivable: a brainstem stroke secondary to a physician’s needle misplacement. In the wake of the tragedy, she discovered the power of dictation and the bounty of metaphor. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the Stardust Review, the Sacramento Literary Review, the Amsterdam Review, and many others. Her first collection of creative nonfiction, From Scientist to Stroke Survivor: Life Redacted from Lived Places Publishing became an Amazon best-seller in its first week, reaching #1 in four categories. Her first collection of poetry, ‘Instructions for Selling-Off Grief’, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books (2025). She is enrolled in the MFA program at Queens College. Find out more at ellykatz.com.
‘When Remembering I’m More Than What Wires into Forgetting’ was originally published on 6 October 2024.
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A Town of Shadows
Ashington
I was born in a town of shadows.
The shadow of the black bridge,
where boys would crawl, hand by hand,
under rails in Beeching’s gaze,
cheating teenage death by drop
into the lazy Wansbeck.
The shadow of the Charltons,
who kicked their way out of here,
swapped a life of dirt and toil
for Wembley and Jules Rimet,
cheered on by the mining lads
through envy-gritted teeth.
I was born in a town of shadows.
The shadows of the coal rows,
lined up in parallel,
numbered like a New York map,
named for Shakespeare’s heroines
and upward-mobile trees.
The shadow of the pit wheels
that lowered men to dust-choke dark
to dig out black prosperity,
the rock on which this town was built,
till slamming to their final stop,
class war thrown in the spokes.
I was born in a town of shadows.
The shadow of the 80s,
when Thatcher and MacGregor took
a hatchet to the working man.
Divide and rule, divide and rule,
son, father, friend, neighbour.
See this town is on its knees
and kick it in the guts.
The shadow of the dole queue,
from Woodhorn Road to Rhondda,
lining up for cast-off crumbs,
another week of nothing for
someone with your skill set.
Go back home, don’t complain,
and better luck next time.
I was born in a town of shadows.
A shadow on a lung.
Joe Williams is a writer and performing poet from Leeds. His latest book is The Taking Part, a pamphlet of poems on the theme of sport and games, published by Maytree Press. joewilliams.co.uk X: @JoeWilliamsPoet Insta: @joewilliamsleeds
‘A Town of Shadows’ was originally published on 2 December 2024.