2007 Forward Prize for Poetry

SEAN O’BRIEN has won the 2007 Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection for The Drowned Book (Picador, 2007), his sixth collection of poems, while Daljit Nagra was declared the winner for Best First Collection for his first volume of poetry, Look We Have Coming to Dover! (Faber & Faber, 2007). This is the third time O’Brien has won the prize. He is the only poet in the prize’s history to have won the award thrice. He won it for Ghost Train in 1995 and Downriver in 2001. Alice Oswald won for Best Single Poem for her poem, “Dunt,” published in Poetry London.

Judge Michael Symmons Roberts called The Drowned Book “beautifully constructed, witty and heart-wrenching” and considered it the poet’s strongest collection to date. “A fully realised, highly accomplished collection, it is a sustained elegy for lost friends, landscapes and a decaying culture,” he said. Nagra won for a volume that captures the experiences of British-born Indians.