This week, our poetry news roundup takes a look at the winner of the Forward Poetry Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Victoria Chang Announced as Winner of 2024 Forward Poetry Prize

The poet Victoria Chang has been announced as this year’s winner of the Forward Poetry Prize for her poetry collection “With My Back to the World,” which was inspired by the painter Agnes Martin.

Chang will take home the £10,000 main award in the best collection category. The winner of best collection is Majorie Lotfi, Cindy Juyoung Ok is the winner of the best single written poem and Leyla Josephine was named the winner of the best single performed poem. This means that the winners list for 2024 is an all-female one.

Speaking on behalf of the judging panel this year, Jane Clarke said that the winning entries “demonstrate that poetry is more vital than ever.” The panel felt that all of the winners, no matter what style, had the ability to enrich the life of the reader, and give them a better understanding of themselves and the world around them.

Chang, who was born in Detroit and is now based in California was inspired by the writing and painting of Agnes Martin, and the title of her collection came from Martin’s declaration  “I paint with my back to the world.” Martin was more interested in capturing abstract experience rather than material existence.

Lofti is a previous winner of the Felix Dennis Prize, which she was awarded for her first collection. OK is based in California and her winning poem was about domestic violence. Josephine, who was born in Glasgow, is the second poet to win an award for performed poetry – the category was introduced to the Forward Prize last year. Bottom of Form

The Forward Prize is a well-established event in the poetry calendar since its inauguration in 1992. The likes of Ted Hughes and Simon Armitage, the current poet laureate, have been amongst its previous winners.

Author and Poet Named Nobel Prize in Literature Winner

Han Kang who wrote “The Vegetarian,” published in 2007, is an author who took a chance at writing poetry. She has recently been named by the Swedish Academy as the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature for the transition between the two which produced what they have described as her “poetic and experimental style” which they felt has made her “an innovator in contemporary prose”.

Not only is Han Kang the first South Korean writer to have been awarded a Nobel prize in this field, but she is only the 18^th woman to have received the prize for Literature in the history of the prize, which spans 117 years and 121 winners. Kang was born in 1970 and is also a winner of the International Booker Prize in 2016 as well as a number of other prestigious awards. Including most recently, the Prix Médicis Étranger in 2023.

The Vegetarian is her most read work. Since its initial publication in 2007, it has been translated into English, first in the UK in 2015 and then in the US in 2016.