A poetic exploration of the wounds the US has inflicted on its indigenous people, written by one of the few remaining speakers of the Mojave language, has made the shortlist for the prestigious Forward prize for best collection.
As Black Lives Matter protests sweep the world in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Natalie Diaz – a MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient and former professional basketball player – writes in her collection, Postcolonial Love Poem, of police violence against Native Americans. In her poem American Arithmetic, she notes that “Native Americans make up less than / 1 percent of the population of America”, but “Police kill Native Americans more / than any other race”.
“Race is a funny word. / Race implies someone will win, / implies, I have as good a chance of winning as – // Who wins the race that isn’t a race?” she asks.
Diaz, who was born in Fort Mojave Indian Village in California, says that the poem “was written in acknowledgment of, solidarity with, and in conversation with the police violence perpetrated against all black and brown people in the United States”, adding that her poetry is a demand for “a different visibility, one that makes my nation uncomfortable – my speakers refused to be defined by their wounds and would instead sow them and reap light from them”.
Postcolonial Love Poem is up against four other titles for the £10,000 prize. David Morley is nominated for FURY, which takes its title from the boxer Tyson Fury and includes verbatim quotes from him: “Nothing’s talked about in my family … we just give each other a punch.” Vicki Feaver’s I Want! I Want!, her fourth collection in 40 years, draws its title from William Blake’s illustration of a child reaching for the moon, and moves from her childhood ambition to be a poet, to becoming a woman “buried under ice with words burning inside”. Pascale Petit is nominated for Tiger Girl, an exploration of her grandmother’s Indian heritage growing up near the forests of Ranthambore in Rajasthan, as is Caroline Bird’s The Air Year, named for the time before the first, or “paper”, anniversary in a relationship.
Chair of judges and social historian Alexandra Harris said the judging process had coincided almost exactly with the first two months of lockdown.
“None of the books were written for a pandemic, but it was noticeable how often a strong poem would seem as true to the hour and the day as the constantly updated news,” she said, describing the collections on the shortlist as “rich in energy and surprise, intellectually agile, sensuous, made to last”.
Harris said that almost everyone had been turning to poetry over the course of the spring, with even Vanity Fair going so far as to identify the coronavirus pandemic as “a moment” for the art form.
“Poetry had a moment that lasted through both world wars. It has a moment whenever there is pressure and threat, and whenever we want to think carefully – together or individually,” she said. “In times of distraction it can carve out a space of concentration. Poems can shake or shock or magnetise our ideas into new configurations.”
The five collections in the running for the £5,000 Felix Dennis prize for best first collection have also been announced, including Will Harris’s debut RENDANG, an exploration of his Anglo-Indonesian heritage, and Nina Mingya Powles’s Magnolia 木蘭, which sees her writing of Disney’s film Mulan, and learning the Mandarin of her grandparents.
Last year’s best collection winner Fiona Benson is nominated for the £1,000 prize for best poem with her poem, Mama Cockroach, I Love You, as is previous nominee Malika Booker and the Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort.
The winners will be announced on 25 October. Meanwhile, on 30 June, the awards are launching a Meet the Poet online series, which will feature readings from the shortlisted books and the chance to ask the poets about their work. Herbert said the initiative was partly inspired by 2014 Forward prizes judge Jeremy Paxman, who called for a “Poetry Inquisition” so the public could ‘“ask poets to explain why they chose to write about the particular subject they wrote about, and why they chose the particular form and language, idiom, the rest of it”.
“At last! A chance to ask poets what they’re on about. It’s been too long,” said Paxman of the new initiative.
The 2020 Forward prize for best collection
The Air Year by Caroline Bird (Carcanet)
Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz (Faber & Faber)
I Want! I Want! by Vicki Feaver (Cape Poetry)
FURY by David Morley (Carcanet)
Tiger Girl by Pascale Petit (Bloodaxe Books)
The 2020 Felix Dennis prize for best first collection
Shine, Darling by Ella Frears (Offord Road Books)
RENDANG by Will Harris (Granta Poetry)
My Darling from the Lions by Rachel Long (Picador)
Magnolia 木蘭 by Nina Mingya Powles (Nine Arches Press)
Citadel by Martha Sprackland (Pavilion Poetry)
The 2020 Forward Prize for best single poem
Mama Cockroach, I Love You by Fiona Benson (Poetry London)
The Little Miracles by Malika Booker (Magma)
(Un)certainties by Regi Claire (Mslexia & PBS Women’s Poetry Competition)
Nocturne for a Moving Train by Valzhyna Mort (The Poetry Review)
Dick pics by Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang (The Moth)
