Jay Bernard has won the Ted Hughes award for new poetry with the performance Surge: Side A, a multimedia sequence which explores the 1981 New Cross fire.

The £5,000 prize is given to the poet “who has made the most exciting contribution to poetry”, putting published collections alongside live performance, installations and radio pieces.

Bernard, who uses the pronoun “they”, examined a tragedy which came to be a defining moment in black British history after 13 young people died at a birthday party in south London.

The cause of the fire has never been established, with inquests in 1981 and 2004 returning open verdicts amid accusations of police incompetence and government indifference.

The hour-long solo performance, which was given at the Roundhouse in north London as part of the 2017 Last Word festival, combined archive footage with film, audio and live poetry written in the voices of those killed in the blaze.

Bernard switches between the raw horror of the unfolding tragedy, writing: “Voices ah call seh dem haffi get out / “Screamin begin an di people ah shout”, and the scene outside, where “The flash of the photographer / leaves hot white / wherever the world looks: // they twist back her arm / handcuff her and lift her to her feet / pull back her snarling face for the press // We watch”.

The aftermath is conjured up in reflections from those left behind – ”I asked them for your / body. And they said they didn’t advise it, me going to see what / was left” – and in public pronouncements where the personal has been removed: “The family of Blank today issued this statement … Blank broke their own neck in the back of the – / The officers involved have defended their actions”. “Will anybody speak of this / the way the flowers do,” Bernard writes, “the way the common speaks /of the fearless dying leaves?”

According to one of the judges, Sally Beamish, what most impressed the panel about Bernard’s performance was “the honesty, the vulnerability and the fact it was so intensely personal”.

“What Jay has done is to relate the story of the New Cross fire from their own perspective,” Beamish said. “In an amazing way, they’ve made a parallel between that struggle for validation in the black British community and their own redefining of their gender through surgery. It made it a very intimate experience, very personal and very brave.”

The performance centres on a young woman who died in the fire, Beamish explained, “a girl who expected to become a woman and never did. Perhaps there’s also a parallel there with Jay, who was born a girl and was expected to become a woman, but has made a different choice.”

As well as considering the written text, the judges watched the film projected during the event and footage of Bernard reading their own work, Beamish said. “All the work on the shortlist was astonishing and inspiring. This stood out as something which we wanted to find a wider audience.”

Bernard’s work has appeared in anthologies and magazines including Ten: The New Wave, and Out of Bounds: Black British and Asian Poets, and Place. They performed as part of two Speaking Volumes Breaking Grounds tours in the US, and were poet in residence at the George Padmore Institute.

Alongside Beamish on the judging panel were the poets Gillian Allnutt and Lemn Sissay. The prize was founded by the poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, and is funded by the stipend the laureate traditionally receives from the Queen.

Bernard joins a roster of winners including Alice Oswald – who won the inaugural award in 2009 with her collection Weeds and Wild Flowers – Lavinia Greenlaw, Andrew Motion and last year’s winner, Hollie McNish.