The Winner Of The first-ever Mairtín Crawford Award was Rosamund Taylor.
2017 saw the inaugural year of the Mairtín Crawford Awards. The Award was organised in conjunction with Moyra Donaldson, a close friend of Mairtín, and in association with the Irish Writers Centre.
The first year of the Awards was for a Poetry Award only and the judging panel included Moyra Donaldson, Matt Kirkham and Paul Maddern.
The first ever winner of the Maírtin Crawford Award for Poetry 2017 was Rosamund Taylor. Click here to read her winning work.
Rosamund's poem The Proof won the London Magazine Poetry Competition in 2020. In 2019 she won third place for the Ginkgo Prize for Eco Poetry and was a recipient of a Words Ireland mentorship. Her poem, Pride 2017, was chosen by Poetry Ireland as one of twelve “Pocket Poems” to be widely distributed in celebration of National Poetry Day 2020. She has published over 40 poems in Ireland, Canada, the US and the UK. Recently, her poems have appeared in Banshee, Channel, Magma, Poetry Salzburg, Poetry Ireland Review and on Lambda Literary.
When asked how winning the Award has changed her writing career, Rosamund said:
Winning the Mairtín Crawford Award was a huge boost to my confidence as a poet. Through the encouragement and guidance of my mentor, Paul Maddern, my work became more assured and I pushed myself to experiment and develop in new directions I was offered readings in a number of different settings on the strength of the award, which has increased my profile, strengthened my skills as a performer, and helped me to polish and focus my work.
The Runner-Up's for the Award were;
Ross Thompson
Michael Dooley
Michael Dooley's poems have appeared in, amongst others, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, Banshee and online at RTE Culture. He has been shortlisted for numerous honours, including The Strokestown International Poetry Competition, The Doolin Poetry Prize, The Cúirt New Writing Prize, the Mairtín Crawford Award (joint runner-up), The Charles Macklin Prize (runner-up), The Dermot Healy International Poetry Prize, and was highly commended for The Patrick Kavanagh Award. Recently, he was selected to read for the Introductions series at The Cork International Poetry Festival. He is a teacher and lives in Limerick.
When asked how being shortlisted had changed his writing career, Michael said:
Being awarded joint runner-up alongside Ross Thompson in the inaugural Mairtín Crawford gave me a greater confidence in my writing. It allowed me to recognise more clearly that, sometimes, that obstinate little conviction, that belief in the quality of one's lines so often battered by rejections and self-doubt, may actually be on to something afterall.
