‘Sublime, precise, darkly foreboding’ – Galatea by Melanie Challenger

These are the words of Harold Bloom, commending Melanie Challenger’s Galatea. It was shortlisted for the 2007 Forward Prize for Best First Collection.

I asked Melanie about her feelings towards being nominated:

How did it feel when you discovered Galatea had been shortlisted?

Naturally, as there are not massive audiences for new poetry, I was most pleased by [...]

Our Forward curse strikes yet again.......

There’s an air of disappointment in the office today. Siân Hughes’ The Missing just missed out on the Forward Best First Collection award.

The prize went to Emma Jones’s The Striped World published by Faber. Don Patterson’s Rain, another Faber title, won the Best Collection award. Robin Robertson won Best Single Poem for ‘At Roane Head’. Congratulations to [...]

It’s Forward Prize week….

…and we’re celebrating our Forward history

On Wednesday evening (7th October) we shall discover the winners of this year’s Forward Prizes. Our very own Siân Hughes is in the running to win Best First Collection for The Missing. We’ll be at Somerset House to cheer her on.

Salt has a rich history of [...]

Joseph Hutchison enjoys some extraordinary restraint

“Just a note here about a slim Salt Publishing publication I recently read, Siân Hughes’s The Missing. The Missing is a first book, but it’s author is no novice at life.”

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Peter McLachlin celebrates Hughes’s use of idiom

“Siân Hughes’ use of idiomatic language is superb, and often has the effect of lulling the reader into a feeling of the quotidian, leaving him or her unprepared for the poem’s ending.”

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Tony Williams on Siân Hughes

“Towards the end of last week I read Sian Hughes’s The Missing, shortlisted for this year’s Forward Prize for Best First Collection. I haven’t read the other books on the shortlist so I can’t comment on who should win, but I can say that this one’s really good – a brief, affecting, plain and magnificent [...]

Matthew Stewart on Siân Hughes

“For once, a collection outdoes its blurb – as mentioned in a previous post, “The Missing” is an exceptional book in the context of contemporary U.K. poetry.

“Siân Hughes’ subject matters in “The Missing” are signposted from the start. Her lost third child and the end of a relationship are themes that run though the [...]

Siân Hughes longlisted for The Guardian First Book Award

The only poetry on the longlist is The Missing by Siân Hughes, a collection that deals with parenting, illness, loss, regret and ill-fated love.

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Siân Hughes shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Best First Collection Prize

Siân Hughes has been shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Best First Collection Prize in the 2009 Forward Prizes for her collection The Missing.