| Category 1: The
Strokestown International Poetry Prize
Lawrence Sail
has published eight books of poems, most recently The World
Returning (Bloodaxe Books, 2002) and Building into Air
(Bloodaxe Books,1995). He has edited several anthologies, including First
and Always: Poems for Great Ormond Street Children¹s Hospital
and The New Exeter Book of Riddles. He has been
chairman of the Arvon Foundation, a judge for the Whitbread Book of the
Year and the Eric Gregory Awards, and director of the Cheltenham Festival
of Literature. In 2004 he received a Cholmondeley Award. He is a Fellow of
the Royal Society of Literature.
Mary O'Donnell
is a poet and fiction writer. She studied German and philosophy at
Maynooth. She has written four collections of poetry, most recently September
Elegies (2003), as well as Unlegendary Heroes, Spiderwoman's
Third Avenue Rhapsody and Reading the Sunflowers in September.
Her acclaimed third novel The Elysium Testament was published by
Trident Press in 1999. She has worked as a drama critic and presented
literary programmes for RTE, was Writer in Residence at University
College Dublin and in County Laois, and has taught creative writing in
schools, in writers’ centres and with community groups. She has
received the William Allingham Award, the Listowel Writers' Week Award and
a Hennessy Literature Award. She is a member of the Irish
multi-disciplinary arts organisation Aosdána.
Peter Denman
lectures in the department of English at NUI Maynooth, where he has
devised and taught many courses in contemporary poetry. He has been editor
of Poetry Ireland Review, and poetry editor of the Irish University
Review. He has reviewed and broadcast extensively, and written numerous
articles on Irish poetry. His own poems and translations have appeared in
periodicals in Great Britain and Ireland, and in a collection The
Poet's Manual. He was the winner of an Eric Gregory Award.
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| Category 2: The
Strokestown Gaelic Poetry Prize Rody
Gorman
was born in Dublin and now lives in the Isle of Skye. He has published the
poetry collections Fax and Other Poems, Cùis-Ghaoil
Bealach Garbh, Air a' Charbad fo Thalamh/On the Underground,
Naomhóga na Laoi, Taaaaaaadhaaaaaaal!
and Tóithín ag Tláithínteacht in English, Irish and
Scottish Gaelic. He has worked as writing fellow at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig in
Skye and at University College Cork and is editor of the annual Irish,
Scottish Gaelic and Manx poetry anthology An Guth. Among his Gaelic
translations are works by Cavafy, Yeats, Prévert, Neruda, Holan, Milosz,
Rósewicz, Larkin, Popa, Holub, Aspenstrom, Snyder, Longley and Armitage.
His English translations include poems by Donald MacAulay, Sorley MacLean
and Iain Crichton Smith. He is judge of Scottish Gaelic entries for the
annual Féile Filíochta.
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| Category 3: The
Strokestown Prize for humorous political or topical satire, or invective, in verse.
Iggy McGovern
lives in Dublin, where he lectures in Physics at Trinity College
("a dirty job but somebody has to do it!"). His wit and verbal
dexterity, however, has been honed by keen northern winds. He is a
recipient of the Hennessy Award for Poetry and a first collection of his
work will be published in 2005 by Dedalus Press. A keen
"rhymer", he has featured in the Baffle, Swift International
Satire and Strokestown Political Satire Competitions and was the winner of
the RTE Rattlebag Poetry Slam in 2004.
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