In 1994, the New Generation Poets promotion celebrated the nation’s 20 brightest young poets. Looking back at the list today, many of them, including Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy, John Burnside, Lavinia Greenlaw, Michael Donaghy and Don Paterson, have not only gone on to tremendous critical success but they have also earned a place in the hearts of the poetry loving public. Over the last ten years British poetry has continued to flourish, and so, as the anniversary approached, the Art’s Council and the Poetry Book Society decided that this time round the list should reward the most exciting new voices to have emerged in the past decade – to discover poets who will go on to define the Next Generation.

Chaired by the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, the judging panel entrusted with making the selection was as diverse as it was distinguished. It comprised the award-winning poet and novelist, Simon Armitage (who also appeared on the original New Generation list), the novelist and former Poet in Residence at the Museum of London, Bernardine Evaristo, Colin Greenwood, the bass player from Radiohead - arguably rock music’s most thoughtful practitioners, A L Kennedy, the only writer to be included in Granta Magazine’s 1993 and 2003 Best of Young British Novelist lists and a Booker-Prize Judge, the distinguished broadcaster and political biographer, Jim Naughtie and Marie Robertson, a Poetry Book Society member with a truly voracious appetite for poetry.

After reading dozens of volumes and following much deliberation and heated debate, here are the poets they judged to the best contemporary poetry has to offer. Come back in ten years time and we are sure you’ll see they weren’t wrong.

Agbabi, Patience	Transformatrix
Dalton, Amanda	How to Disappear
Drake, Nick	The Man in the White Suit
Draycott, Jane	Prince Rupert's Drop
Farley, Paul	The Ice Age
Leontia Flynn	These Days
Matthew Francis	Dragons
Sophie Hannah	First of the Last Chances
Tobias Hill	Midnight in the City of Clocks
Gwyneth Lewis	Keeping Mum
Oswald, Alice	Dart
Petit, Pascale	The Zoo Father
Polley, Jacob	The Brink
Rees Jones, Deryn	The Memory Tray
Riordan, Maurice	Floods
Robertson, Robin	A Painted Field
Sheers, Owen	The Blue Book
Shukman, Henry	In Doctor No's Garden
Smith, Catherine	The Butcher's Hands
Sprackland, Jean	Hard Water