Queens’ English Fellow Ian Patterson has won the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Single Poem in the prize’s 26th annual festival. ‘The Plenty of Nothing’ is dedicated in memoriam to Ian’s late wife Jenny Diski, who died in 2016. An author in her own right, Diski wrote 18 books including the memoir In Gratitude which detailed her diagnosis with inoperable lung cancer. Patterson said he started writing the poem two days before she died and completed it in the days following.
“It jolts the reader. It’s a very difficult subject so it should be difficult. But then it’s also very tender, very moving, both complex and multi-layered,” said Andrew Marr, the chair of the judging panel, urging readers to “please read it thrice – don’t read it once and put it aside. Because that’s the thing about poetry – it tends to be fewer words on a page, but if a poem is any good, it needs rereading.”
Read Ian’s poem here.