Mapping the Future editors shortlisted for Sky Arts Awards 2024
'Mapping the Future is a groundbreaking anthology of poetry and original essays offering fresh and daring literary perspectives from a new generation of outstanding British poets. It represents a landmark moment in the history of poetry.' – Bernardine Evaristo
Nathalie Teitler and Karen McCarthy Woolf have been shortlisted for the poetry award in the inaugural Sky Arts Awards for their anthology Mapping the Future: The Complete Works Poets, which was published by Bloodaxe Books in October 2023. The winners will be announced at The Roundhouse in London on 17 September 2024, broadcast live on Sky Arts and on Freeview in the UK.
Building on the legacy of the South Bank Sky Arts Awards, the Sky Arts Awards celebrate and reward excellence across all art forms, including classical and popular music, opera, dance, comedy, theatre, TV, film, literature and poetry.
Phil Edgar-Jones, Director of Sky Arts, commented:
“This year we’re rallying around the question of why the arts matter, helped by the inimitable Lord Melvyn Bragg, all the artists who appear in our shows, and the expert juries assembled for each awards category. Following in the footsteps of the South Bank Sky Arts Awards, the Sky Arts Awards will allow us to celebrate and venerate all the arts in one place, and definitively prove the value of the sector. And with the cohort of superstar nominees below, it’s going to be an unmissable night.”
In addition to the above, there are three further awards: The Times Breakthrough Award (Ella Frears has been shortlisted for poetry), The Melvyn Bragg Award (to be announced), and The Arts Hero Award. The latter celebrates the unsung heroes who work behind the scenes to make the arts possible. From sound engineers and lighting technicians, to security and housekeeping, this award recognises the invaluable contributions of all of those at the heart of the culture scene. You can nominate an Arts Hero here. Nominations close at 23:59, Sunday 11 August 2024.
For details of the full shortlists, see Sky's website here.
For more about the awards and the shortlisted titles, see: https://skyartsawards.sky/
'Mapping the Future: The Complete Works Poets is not just a magnificent anthology of some of the best UK poets, it is also an exploration on how poetry in Britain has become much more inclusive over the past 15 years: what has been won, and what is still being fought for. This anthology offers a timely insight into British poetry and how the voice of the ‘other’ continues to take centre-stage in pivotal times.'
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Mapping the Future brings together work by all 30 Fellows of the Complete Works poetry mentoring scheme supporting British poets from diverse backgrounds. The anthology was published by Bloodaxe Books in October 2023, and was edited by Nathalie Teitler, Director of The Complete Works, and Karen McCarthy Woolf, a Fellow of the programme who went on to edit the second two TEN anthologies featuring work by The Complete Works poets. The anthology has a Foreword by Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo, who initiated The Complete Works programme and who co-edited the first TEN anthology with Daljit Nagra.
The anthology presents new or recent work by Complete Works Fellows including Raymond Antrobus, Mona Arshi, Jay Bernard, Malika Booker, Kayo Chingonyi, Inua Ellams, Will Harris, Sarah Howe, Roger Robinson, Warsan Shire, Yomi Ṣode and Karen McCarthy Woolf. It also includes ten engaging essays re-drawing the map of British poetry, touching on some of the most significant topics of our time. Mapping the Future also includes work by Momtaza Mehri, who is also on the Sky Arts Awards poetry shortlist for her debut collection Bad Diaspora Poems.
In her introduction to Mapping the Future, Nathalie Teitler recounted the history of The Complete Works, which supported 30 poets from 2008 through to 2020, and which became the most successful collective ever formed in British poetry. In her Foreword to the anthology, Bernardine Evaristo set out what prompted her to establish The Complete Works programme. A report she initiated found that in 2008 the level of poets of colour published by major presses was less than 1%. By 2020 it was over 20%.
The Complete Works Poetry played a significant role in this transformation of the British poetry scene, producing three Forward Prize winners, two T.S. Eliot Prize and Ted Hughes Award winners, along with single prize wins for the Somerset Maugham Award, Dylan Thomas Prize, Rathbones Folio Prize and Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. TCW Fellows have gone on to judge every major poetry award, publishing over 40 collections between them.
Karen McCarthy Woolf was born in London to English and Jamaican parents. She is a Fellow of The Complete Works, and was included in its first anthology, Ten: New Poets from Spread the Word (2010), edited by Bernardine Evaristo & Daljit Nagra. McCarthy Woolf edited the subsequent anthologies, Ten: The New Wave (2014) and Ten: Poets of the New Generation (2017), also co-editing Mapping the Future: The Complete Works (2023) with Nathalie Teitler, all from Bloodaxe Books. Her first collection, An Aviary of Small Birds (Carcanet, 2014), was shortlisted for both the Forward and Aldeburgh Best First Collection Prizes. Her second, Seasonal Disturbances (Carcanet, 2017), was a winner in the inaugural Laurel Prize for eco poetry. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.
Nathalie Teitler was born in Buenos Aires and holds a PhD in Latin American Poetry. She has run literature programmes promoting diversity in the UK for over 20 years and is Director of The Complete Works. She co-edited Un Nuevo Sol: British LatinX Writers (flipped eye, 2019) with Nii Ayikwei Parkes, and Mapping the Future: The Complete Works (2023) with Karen McCarthy Woolf. She was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018, and was appointed Projects Manager for the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships in 2018.
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For digital or printed review copies of Mapping the Future, please email Christine Macgregor: publicity@bloodaxebooks.com.
For more information about the Sky Arts Awards, please contact: Lucy.Butterfield@sky.uk
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'This generous anthology marks 15 years of the transformative project founded by Bernardine Evaristo and directed by Nathalie Teitler, which has been rocket fuel for work by British poets of majority global heritage ... The 30 Complete Works fellows comprise a roster of some of the most influential voices in the UK today, including Raymond Antrobus, Jay Bernard, Malika Booker, Sarah Howe, Roger Robinson and Warsan Shire. This volume demonstrates again how visionary that programme of mentorship and real-world opportunities was. There’s a breathtaking variety of poetics ... read this for excitement, inspiration, and also to map, as Eileen Pun puts it, “How thought becomes manifest, how the I / continually tries every variation of light”.' – Fiona Sampson, The Guardian (Poetry Books of the Month)
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Poems from Mapping the Future
This video features these poets reading their poems from Mapping the Future: Leo Boix, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Ian Humphreys, Degna Stone, Rishi Dastidar, Adam Lowe, Eileen Pun, Rowyda Amin, Malika Booker, Roger Robinson, Denise Saul, Seni Seneviratne and Inua Ellams.
Bernardine Evaristo on Mapping the Future
Bernardine Evaristo talks about the cultural importance of The Complete Works, which she founded, and the anthology Mapping the Future, drawing on the Foreword she wrote for the book.
[27 July 2024]
