On Wed 15th April 2026 at 7.30pm Limerick Writers’ Centre proudly present, in association with Poetry Ireland, The 2026 Desmond O’Grady Memorial Reading which takes place in The People’s Museum of Limerick, Pery Square, Limerick. Plus the results of The Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition 2026 will be announced by competition judge Sean Lysaght. The event is part of April is Poetry Month in Limerick festival.
The three poets reading on the night are Sean Lysaght, Jami O’Halloran and Jo Slade.
Seán Lysaght is the author of several volumes of poems, including Scarecrow (1998), The Mouth of a River (2007) and Carnival Masks (2014) from Gallery Press, and a biography of the naturalist Robert Lloyd Praeger (Four Courts Press, 1998). He has also written prose about wildlife and landscape: Eagle Country (2018), Wild Nephin (2020) and Unveiling the Sun (2025). His latest collection, New Leaf, was published by Gallery in 2022. He lives in Westport, County Mayo. Sean grew up in Limerick, in Thomondgate, just by the River Shannon and has written a sequence of poems entitled, ‘Limerick’, in his collection ERRIS (Gallery, 2002). He is a former winner of the O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry.
Jamie O’Halloran is an American-Irish poet whose Corona Connemara & Half a Crown was awarded a winner in the 2021 Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition. Her poems appear most recently in Banshee, Poetry Ireland Review, Southword, Skylight 47 and The Honest Ulsterman. She lives in the West of Ireland. She won the 2025 Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition.
Jo Slade is an poet and artist and has published seven collections of poetry. Her most recent collection Once was published by Salmon Poetry in 2025. Joint winner of the Michael Hartnett Poetry Prize 2014. She lives in Limerick.
About Desmond O’Grady.
Desmond O’Grady (1935 – 2014) was born in Limerick, Ireland. Poet, professor, Harvard teaching fellow, editor, translator, Aosdana member. Widely travelled, O’Grady left his Limerick home in the 1950’s to teach in Paris, Rome and America. Reputed not only for his seventeen collections of poetry and his linguistic prowess, O’Grady was a founding member of the European Community of Writers.
About the Limerick Writers’ Centre
The Limerick Writers’ Centre was founded as a not-for-profit organisation in 2008 to support and promote writers from Limerick and beyond through readings, workshops and publishing activities. Guided by a voluntary board of directors, the Centre has been a driving force, bolstering the literary community in Limerick and surrounding area.
This event offers poetry enthusiasts an opportunity to experience powerful contemporary verse while honouring one of Limerick’s literary legends. The reading symbolises the ongoing vitality of poetry in Limerick and throughout Ireland.
Free entry and open to the public. Enquiries contact: Dominic Taylor at limerickwriterscentre@gmail.com