Tara, a Senior Lecturer in Writing Poetry, in the School of English, Literature, Language and Linguistics, won the coveted award for her poem ‘The Fear’.

She said: “I hardly dare believe that I have won such a wonderful prize, I am honoured and delighted, especially because this particular prize recognises ‘the single poem’ - a category which has always seemed to me a very positive and daring celebration of that most contrary, strange, and uncompromising literary form. It offers hope that even in this clamorous world a single poem can be heard and can matter.”

The Forward Prize judges praised the  universality of 'The Fear'. They said: “It transmits across the generations and across experience, and that collective fear we all share about its legacy for those that follow. It’s a simple poem and yet it does so much. It’s not only timely; it’s timeless.”

New poetry

The Forward Prizes for Poetry are the most influential awards for new poetry in the UK and Ireland, honouring fresh voices alongside internationally established names.

First awarded in 1992, over the last three decades the prizes have celebrated some of the most recognised names in poetry including Newcastle University’s Professor Sinéad Morrissey and Emeritus Professor Sean O’Brien who is the only person to have won the award for best collection three times. Other well-known poets who have won the award include current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay.

Tara is an Irish poet and has published three collections of poetry with Carcanet Press: This is Yarrow, winner of the Seamus Heaney Prize for Poetry; The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx, which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes; and most recently Savage Tales, winner of the Michael Hartnett Poetry Award 2024.