I am absolutely delighted to have won the 2024 Mairtín Crawford Award for Poetry. One of the things I love about this award is the possibility to submit a portfolio of poems: figuring out which poems to submit was an exercise in understanding how the poems speak to each other, how they work together and represent my voice as a poet, rather than sending in my ‘best’ poem – a judgement which will inevitably change over time (after a quite a few years of writing poetry, I can say that this is perhaps the only constant: you write a poem, believe it is your ‘best’ poem to date, get overwhelmed by the fear you’ll never write a poem as good as this ever again and this marks the end of you-as-poet, and then… you write another poem, believe it is your ‘best’ poem to date, etc.) Writing is exhausting and beautiful – just keep at it and write, rewrite, send out your work. Poetry is a conversation, and your poems deserve to be read.

Lianne O’Hara is a poet and playwright.

Her work is published in Winter Papers, The Rialto, Poetry Ireland Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, The London Magazine, Abridged, Banshee, and elsewhere. Soap features in the Ink & Imagination exhibition at the Museum of Literature Ireland.

Her play Fluff had a sell out run at Dublin Fringe Festival 2022. Her new play Baby will premiere in Dublin in September 2024.

She is currently working on a series of new poems commissioned by Grangegorman Histories, documenting the lives and experiences of patients and staff at the former psychiatric hospital.

 

We are also delighted to reveal the runner-ups and Shortlist of the Poetry Award are as follows:

1st Runner Up: Lucy Holme

Lucy Holme is a mother and creative writing teacher studying for a PhD at University College Cork. Her work features in PN Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, The London Magazine, Banshee and The Pig's Back amongst others. She was a runner up in The London Magazine Poetry Prize, Southword Literary Essay Competition, the Red Line Poetry Competition, the Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition, the Brotherton Poetry Prize, the Wales Poetry Prize and was the winner of the Cúirt New Writing Prize for Poetry 2024. Her debut chapbook, Temporary Stasis (Broken Sleep, 2022) was shortlisted for The Patrick Kavanagh Award and her first nonfiction essay collection is forthcoming from Broken Sleep Books in Autumn 2024.

 

2nd Runner Up: Derville Quigley

Derville Quigley was raised on a farm in Co. Monaghan and currently lives in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Her poems and short stories have been published with The Ogham Stone, Trasna, Hidden Peak Press, Beyond Words, Hooghly Review and Litro among others. In 2022 she placed 2nd in Litro's Surreal and Strange Prose Poetry Contest judged by Jose Hernandez Diaz. Derville graduated with an MA in Screen Arts from Sheffield Hallam University and as an award-winning filmmaker, has written and directed short films and documentaries for the Arts Council Northern Ireland, BBC and Channel 4. She placed 2nd runner up in the Mairtín Crawford Poetry Award 2024 and will attend the Seamus Heaney Poetry Summer School at Queens University Belfast. She is co-founder of Strange Birds a writing feedback community.

I am so glad I submitted to the Mairtín Crawford Poetry Award 2024. This is a special competition for emerging poets/writers who need a gentle nudge in the right direction. The advice given at the application stage was invaluable,  not to mention the sense of validation that came with being placed. Thank you to all involved. It means alot.

 

Shortlist (n alphabetical order): Erica Jane Morris, Fiona Hanley and Kristen Mears.

Many congratulations to all the nominees!