The countdown has started in earnest for the Forward Prize giving and National Poetry Day, which take place on 1 and 3 October. This year for the first time the Forward prizes will be awarded to poets at a public event in the Purcell Room at London’s Southbank,  with added razzamatazz as some of the top poems are read aloud by two Forward judges, novelist Jeanette Winterson and actor Samuel West, and other actors including Juliet Stevenson, Helen McCrory, Natascha McElhone, and David Soul.

The previous evening, in a Forward Prize curtain raiser, a number of shortlisted poets, including  Rebecca Goss, Glyn Maxwell, Jacob Polley, Michael Symmons Roberts, Emily Berry, Marianne Burton, Steve Ely and Hannah Lowe will be reading at Rough Trade East, at the old Truman brewery in Brick Lane, east London, at 7pm. 

The Forward Prize event also marks the publication launch of the 2014 Forward Book of Poetry.  Organisers have ditched the book’s familiar white cover in favour of a new design by Michael Craig-Martin featuring an energy-saving light bulb. The book contains  biogs of all the shortlisted poets, and a wealth of poems by commended poets, as well as by those shortlisted. Commended poets who did not make it onto the shortlist include Dannie Abse, Simon Armitage, Gillian Clarke, Clive James, Anne Stevenson, and CK Williams.

The Forward Arts Foundation is also organising this year’s National Poetry Day on 3 October, and has commissioned a 30-second film from animator Leo Crane to celebrate the theme of “water, water everywhere”. It starts with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, then weaves in lines from shortlisted Forward poets. 

As well as a host of events planned around the country on or close to the day, National Poetry Day Live at London's Southbank, compered by John Hegley and Joelle Taylor,will include readings from Simon Armitage, Patience Agbabi, Hannah Lowe, David Morley and John Wedgwood Clarke, and a new film-poem by Alice Oswald and Chana Dubinski. All events at National Poetry Day Live are free. The day will end with a reading of sea poems by Simon Armitage and friends, relayed to the Clore Ballroom from A Room for London, the boat on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, at 7pm.