The Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition 2022

CLOSING DATE FOR ENTRIES IS MIDNIGHT FRI 18th MARCH 2022

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 our April is Poetry Month in Limerick 2019 festival. The prizewinner of this year’s competition will be announced during April and will be invited to give a reading of his/her work during the 2022 festival.

First Prize 200.00 Euro
Runner-Up Prize 50.00 Euro

ENTER ONLINE
Entry is by email to limerickwriterscentre@gmail.com after an appropriate fee is paid by PayPal to the account of taylordj2020@outlook.com https://www.paypal.com/ie/home

Enter by post to
Limerick Writers’ Centre, c/o The Umbrella Project, 78 O’Connell St., Limerick, Ireland with appropriate fee in Euros only (cheques/PO made out to Limerick Writers’ Centre).
Your poems will not be returned, so do keep a copy.
All entries must be received before midnight FRI 18th March 2022.
Entries received after this time will be discarded.
All entries are judged anonymously so please do not put any identifying features on the poems.

Entry fees are as follows;
1 poem 3.50 Euro
3 Poems 5.50 Euro

Competition Judge; Adam Wyeth
Adam Wyeth, born 1978, 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. 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.

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Poems, can be in either Irish or English, can be on any subject and presented in any form or style.
There are no restrictions on content.
International entries are welcome.
All poems must be the unpublished work of the person entering them into the competition. They must not have been published, self-published or accepted for publication in print or online, broadcast, or have won another competition at any time.
All entries will be considered anonymously by the judge so poems should not have any indication within them to allow for the identification of the poet.
Should the named judge be unable to proceed, we aim to substitute an alternative judge of equivalent standing as a poet.
There is a recommended length of not more than 40 lines but we are open to receiving longer poems if the subject matter justifies it
Poems can be entered by email to limerickwriterscentre@gmail.com putting “Desmond O’Grady Competition” in the subject box and paying the appropriate fee through PAY PAL in Euros.
Enter by post to Limerick Writers’ Centre, c/o The Umbrella Project, 78 O’Connell Street, Limerick, Ireland with appropriate fee in Euros only (cheques/PO made out to Limerick Writers’ Centre). Your poems will not be returned, so do keep a copy.
Please attach all entered poems in one attachment using a standard Word file
All entries will be acknowledged by email only.
Closing Date for all entries is midnight on Friday 18th March 2020.
We cannot accept alterations to the poem(s) once it has been submitted.
Poems cannot be withdrawn from the judging process once they have been entered.
Although copyright will remain with the poet, we reserve the right to publish the winning poem on our website or print books for one year from date of announcement of winning poem.
The organisers reserve the right to withhold prizes if such an action is justified.
The decision of the judges is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

HOW TO ENTER (Email);
1. Pay the appropriate fee to PayPal account address is: taylordj2020@outlook.com and obtain the PayPal transaction code. https://www.paypal.com/ie/home
2. Send your entry via email to limerickwriterscentre@gmail.com
In the subject line please state “Desmond O’Grady Competition 2020”
In the body of the email please state;
Your Name
Your address
Your email address
Poem title(s)
PayPal transaction code
Please attach your poem or poems in a single WORD or TEXT file, there should be no identifying features on the file other than the poem titles,
No other file types will be opened. (No PDFs)

HOW TO ENTER (Post);
Post to Limerick Writers’ Centre, c/o The Umbrella Project, 78 O’Connell Street, Limerick, Ireland with appropriate fee in Euros only (cheques/PO made out to Limerick Writers’ Centre). Your poems will not be returned, so do keep a copy.

ALL POEMS MUST BE RECEIVED BEFORE MIDNIGHT FRI 18th MARCH 2021
https://limerickwriterscentre.com