Our mission is
Our two main programmes are the annual Forward Prizes for Poetry and National Poetry Day, which as the UK’s biggest mass-participation celebration of poetry encourages people to enjoy, discover and share poems they love on the first Thursday of October.
We co-ordinate the national campaign for poetry year-round by working closely with schools and libraries, and encouraging the poetry and literature/literacy sectors to collaborate as a UK-wide poetry network on marketing, research, digital communications and education.
While continuing to focus on developing audiences for poetry, in the next five years we will prioritise initiatives that build robust evidence of poetry’s potential for positive social impact.
Forward Arts Foundation promotes public knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of poetry in the UK and Ireland. We are a charity committed to widening poetry’s audience, honouring achievement and supporting talent: our programmes include National Poetry Day, the Forward Prizes for Poetry and the Forward Book of Poetry, an annual anthology of the year’s best poems.
