The 2025 Forward Prizes for Poetry ceremony at London’s Southbank Centre delivered a historic night for African poetry, with two poets of African descent claiming victories in their respective categories.
Isabelle Baafi, a London-based poet of Jamaican and South African heritage, won the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection for her debut Chaotic Good, published by Faber. The collection, which takes its title from the gaming universe’s moral alignment system, charts the painful terrain of escaping a toxic marriage. Baafi’s work examines the ways power accumulates and is eventually relinquished within both home and community.
Judge Hannah Lavery praised the collection’s freshness, calling it “playful, sharp and full of energy—a voice that feels completely fresh.” Lisa Kelly described it as “a feat of formal brilliance which immerses the reader in the disorientating dynamic of a toxic relationship from which escape is hard-fought and transformative.”
The £5,000 prize is the latest accolade for Baafi, whose pamphlet Ripe won a Somerset Maugham Award in 2020. She has also claimed First Prize in the Winchester Poetry Prize 2023 and Second Prize in the London Magazine Poetry Prize 2022. Her work has appeared in Granta, the Times Literary Supplement, The Poetry Review, and Callaloo, marking her as one of the most exciting voices in contemporary British poetry.
Meanwhile, Manchester poet Griot Gabriel became only the third-ever winner of the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem – Performed category for his piece ‘Where I’m From’, originally performed at Manchester UNESCO City of Literature. The poem, which Gabriel describes as “a love letter to Manchester, specifically paying homage to my local communities of Longsight and Ardwick,” resonated deeply with judges for its ability to capture both the joys and sorrows of community life.
Judge Lisa Kelly noted that the poem “captures community and personal identity with rhythmic force and spellbinding lines.” Gabriel, who describes himself as ‘Underdog, Under armour, Under God’, uses his work to explore race, resistance, faith and personal identity, themes that have made him one of the most compelling voices in performance poetry today.
Gabriel is a youth worker and founder of The Poetry Place. After becoming one of six nationally selected Factory International Fellows, he has written and performed for Warner Bros, been commissioned to work with CHANEL, exhibited at the Metiers D’Art Show, and performed at Glastonbury Festival. He is also Manchester’s 2024 Slam-o-Vision Champion, coming second in the Global UNESCO’s International City of Literature Slamovision. The £1,000 prize adds to his growing list of achievements.
The victories are particularly significant given the strong African presence across this year’s shortlists. As we reported earlier, four poets of African descent were shortlisted across multiple categories: Baafi and Gabriel were joined by Nick Makoha from Uganda, shortlisted for Best Single Poem – Written for ‘Codex©’, and British-Nigerian Joshua Idehen for Best Single Poem – Performed with ‘The World According to Your Mum Doing the Washing’.
The 2025 Forward Prizes also made history by awarding the Best Collection prize to joint winners for the first time. Vidyan Ravinthiran’s Avidyā and Karen Solie’s Wellwater shared the £10,000 prize, with judges unable to choose between the two collections. Chair of judges Sarah Hall called the decision reflective of contemporary poetry’s vibrancy, noting that “it can be impossible to find a single, definitive answer in our complex world.”
Iraqi-heritage poet Abeer Ameer won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem, Written for ‘At Least’, a devastating meditation on the language used to sanitise the violence of airstrikes, originally published in Modron Magazine.
The Forward Prizes, founded in 1992, remain among the UK’s most prestigious poetry awards, with notable alumni including Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Simon Armitage, Jackie Kay, and Carol Ann Duffy. This year’s results confirm what we’ve been saying all along: African voices are not just participating in global poetry conversations, they’re reshaping them entirely.
Congratulations to Isabelle Baafi and Griot Gabriel on their well-deserved wins!
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