The Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition was inaugurated in 2012 by the late Barney Sheehan - poetry impresario of the White House Poetry Revival in honour of Limerick poet Desmond O’Grady. The Limerick Writers’ Centre revived the competition as part of April is Poetry Month in Limerick 2019 festival.
The prizewinner of this year’s competition will be announced during April is Poetry Month 2022 and will be invited to give a reading of his/her work during the 2023 festival. Closing date for entries is midnight Friday 18th March.
Competition Judge Adam Wyeth is an award-winning and critically acclaimed poet, playwright and essayist with four previous books published with Salmon Poetry. In 2019 he received The Kavanagh Fellowship Award. His debut collection Silent Music (2011) was Highly Commended by the Forward Poetry Prize. In 2013 Salmon published his essays The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic Mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry, foreword by Paula Meehan. His second collection The Art of Dying (2016) was an Irish Times Book of the Year. Wyeth’s plays have been performed across Ireland as well as in New York and Berlin. His play This Is What Happened was published by Salmon in 2019. In 2020 he received the Arts Council Ireland Literature Project Award and was selected for the Abbey Theatre Engine Room Development Programme to work on an audio production of About: Blank premiered at Dublin Theatre Festival 2021, performed by Olwen Fouere, Owen Roe and Paula McGlinchey. In 2021 Wyeth was selected for artist residencies at the Heinrich Böll Cottage and the Ámeto Mítico Residency along the Camino de Santiago. Wyeth lives in Dublin where he works as a freelance writer and teaches online creative writing correspondence courses at www.adamwyeth.com and www.fishpublishing.com. He is an Associate Artist of the Civic Theatre, Dublin, and works on ideas and research for the RTÉ Poetry Programme.
Competition entries can be made by email or by post. For more information about how to apply for the Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition 2022, click here.
Closing date for entries is midnight Friday 18th March.
