William Sieghart founded the Forward Prizes for Poetry in 1992 and National Poetry Day in 1994, and is a founding trustee of the Forward Arts Foundation. Born in England, he compiled the anthology Poems of the Decade: An Anthology of the Forward Books of Poetry and wrote The Poetry Pharmacy: Tried-and-True Prescriptions for the Heart, Mind and Soul (Particular Books, 2017), the first of a trilogy. He chaired the Somerset House Trust from 2015 to 2021 and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2016 for services to public libraries.
