The Strokestown International Poetry Competition 2025
Deadline: 31 Jan 2025The Strokestown International Poetry Competition 2025
Established in 1999, former winners include Vona Groarke, Paddy Bushe, Maureen Boyle and Jane Robinson with last year’s winner, Thomas Brezing among a list and shortlist of many distinguished poets. This year’s competition will be judged by the award-winning poet, Jane Clarke. With a prize fund of €2000 and a shortlist of five poets; shortlisted poets will be invited to read their poem at this year’s Strokestown International Poetry Festival 2025 (2-4 May) and where the winner will be announced on Sunday 4 May and presented with a cheque for €1,000. To apply please visit our website https://strokestownpoetryfest.ie and go to ‘Poetry Competition’.
Applications are now upen, and will close on January 31, 2025.
Jane Clarke grew up on a farm in Co. Roscommon and is the author of three poetry collections, The River (2015), When the Tree Falls (2019) and A Change in the Air (2023) published by Bloodaxe Books. She edited the illustrated anthology Windfall: Irish Nature Poems to Inspire and Connect (Hachette Books Ireland, 2023). Her most recent collection, A Change in the Air, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023 and the T.S. Eliot Prize 2023. She received an Arts Council of Ireland Literature Bursary Award in 2024 for the completion of her fourth collection. Jane judged the Poetry Business International Book Competition 2023 and was one of the judges for the Forward Prize for Poetry 2023.
Clear, direct, lovely: Jane Clarke’s voice slips into the Irish tradition with such ease, it is as though she had always been at the heart of it.
– Anne Enright, Laureate for Irish Fiction.