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LAURIE BOLGER'S 'PARKLAND WALK' WINS MOTH POETRY PRIZE 2022, JUDGED BY LOUISE GLÜCK


‘I am over the moon. That poem means a lot, for so many reasons. To be recognised by Louise Glück is honestly wonderful. Thank you for being so bloody lovely & making my year.’ Laurie Bolger

Laurie Bolger is the founder of The Creative Writing Breakfast Club and has been described by the comedian Phil Jupitus as ‘the poet in residence of my heart’Her writing has featured at Glastonbury, TATE, RA & Sky Arts, and her poems have appeared in Poetry Review, The London Magazine and The Moth, among others. This year, Laurie’s writing was shortlisted for The Bridport, Winchester and Sylvia Plath Prizes. She is currently working on her first full length collection, Lady, celebrating autonomy, love and her working class Irish heritage.

My own preference inclines to the irregular over the regular, to suggestion over assertion, to dissonance over harmony, to the demotic over the vatic. I respond to poems that surprise me  “Parkland Walk” reflects this definition of originality. It sounds like speech, at once utterly natural and deeply odd. On the surface, it concerns a pair of rebellious and sassy girls, who like to do things they’ve been warned against. Slowly, almost invisibly, the anecdotal becomes the archetypal: the relatively innocent walk becomes some larger, more fated journey into the unknown and perilous.’
Louise Glück

You can read more about Laurie's win in the Irish Times



SHORTLISTED POEMS:

Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory by Kit Fan
Kit Fan's third poetry collection, The Ink Cloud Reader, is published by Carcanet in April this year. He is the author of two previous books of poems, As Slow As Possible and Paper Scissors Stone. His debut novel, Diamond Hill, was published in 2021 and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.

You can watch Kit read 'Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory' here

Last Year in Baltimore by J. P. Grasser
A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, J. P. Grasser holds a PhD from the University of Utah, where he edited Quarterly West. He lives in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley and serves as an associate editor for 32 Poems


Travel Advisory by Tom Laichas
Tom Laichas is author of Three Hundred Streets of Venice CaliforniaSixty-Three Photographs from the End of a War and Empire of Eden. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in SaltJabberwockThe High Window, Stand and elsewhere. He lives in Venice, California.

 
All four shortlisted poems appear in the spring issue of The Moth, which also happens to be the final issue of the magazine, available to purchase here for as little as €7 (including postage).

You can read more about the prizewinners here, in the Irish Times


COMMENDED POEMS:
 
Nostalgia by Savkar Altinel
Savkar Altinel was born in Istanbul, but left in his late teens and now lives in the UK. He has published four collections of poetry and five genre-bending books dealing with loss, exile and rootlessness in Turkish, and won both of Turkey’s top two literary prizes, the Erdal Öz Literature Award and the Behçet Necatigil Poetry Prize. He has also written a number of poems in English, of which ‘Nostalgia’ is one. He continues to write poetry in English and hopes to complete his transformation into his linguistic double by embarking on a genre-bender similar to his Turkish ones soon.

Amsterdam, Early March 2018 by Matt Hohner
Matt Hohner has won or placed in numerous national and international poetry competitions, including wins in the Doolin International Poetry Prize in Ireland and the Oberon Magazine Poetry Prize, and being shortlisted for The Moth Poetry Prize. His publications include Rattle: Poets RespondSky Island JournalTakahēThe Storms JournalNew ContrastLive Canon, and Prairie Schooner. An editor with Loch Raven Review, Hohner’s first collection Thresholds and Other Poems (Apprentice House) was published in 2018. 
 
Your Heart by Mary-Jane Holmes
Mary-Jane Holmes is studying for a PhD in poetry and translation at Newcastle University, UK. She has won the Live Canon Poetry Pamphlet Prize with her pamphlet Dihedral, the Bath Novella-in-Flash Prize (Don’t Tell the Bees, is published by Ad Hoc Fiction), the Bridport Poetry prize, Dromineer Flash Fiction Prize, Reflex Fiction Flash Fiction Prize and the Mslexia Flash prize. She has been shortlisted for the Beverley International Prize for Literature and longlisted for the UK National Poetry Prize. Her collection of poetry Heliotrope with Matches and Magnifying Glass is published by Pindrop Press and her collection of Flash Fiction Set a Crow to Catch a Crow is published by V. Press. She was included in the BIFFY 50 2019/2020, showcasing the best British and Irish Flash Fiction and was a UK National Poetry Archive showcased poet during lockdown.
 
A Line from Merwin by Dane Holt
Dane Holt’s poems have been published in Poetry Ireland Review, The TrumpetThe White ReviewStandbath maggOne Hand ClappingAnthropocene, Ink Sweat and Tears and elsewhere. He is poetry editor of The Tangerine, a Belfast-based magazine of new writing.
 
Love by Anthony Lawrence
Anthony Lawrence has published eighteen books of poems and a novel. His most recent collection is ‘A Lock of Timedown’ (Life Before Man). His books and individual poems have won a number of awards, including the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, the Queensland and New South Wales Premier’s Awards, and the Blake Poetry Prize. He lives on Moreton Bay with his dingo Benny.

I have been trying to paint a portrait of Simone by Joanna Lowry
Joanna Lowry used to be an art historian writing about photography and contemporary art. Now she just writes poetry. Her work has been placed or shortlisted in a number of competitions – Arvon, Bridport, Teignmouth, Manchester Poets and Players – and she recently completed the MA Writing Poetry at Newcastle University with a Distinction. Her current work deals with age and desire, the striving for beauty and knowledge, and features spectacular women like Simone de Beauvoir, Leonora Carrington, Monica Vitti, and a small number of haunted male artists.
 
Remembrance Sunday by Carolyn Peck
Carolyn Peck was born and grew up in Essex before moving north to study English and Art History at Manchester and Birmingham Polytechnics (this was in the ’80s, before they became universities!). She then moved to London, where she lived and worked in arts administration before retraining and becoming a professional gardener. In 2009 she moved from Brighton to West Dorset where she is currently based. Since 2019 she has been a member of the Bridport-based Black Dog writing group. She has had short stories, flash fiction and poetry short- and long-listed in competitions such as The Bridport Prize and The Olga Sinclair Prize, and in 2022 she came second in the Keats and Shelley Memorial Association Poetry Prize.
 
Between Ghosts by Eleanor Simpson
Eleanor Simpson has been writing poetry for around 10 years. Her work has been previously published in Raum magazine and Glad Writers’ compendium. Eleanor lives in Glasgow with her partner and works as a therapist. She recently became a mother and looks forward to writing about this as soon as she finds the time.
 

ABOUT THE PRIZE
The prize, which is for an unpublished poem, is judged blind each year by a single judge. The overall winner receives €6,000, while the three remaining shortlisted poets each receive €1,000. A further €250 is given to each of the commended poets. The shortlisted poems are published in the Irish Times online. The prize will open again in June 2023.  


 

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