David Nash wins Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize

In The Irish Times this Saturday, Kevin Barry celebrates the legacy of his fellow writer Dermot Healy on his 10th anniversary. Mark Hennessy talks to Prof Corinne Fowler about her new book, Our Island Stories, which traces the imprint left by empire, colonisation and slavery across the rural face of Britain. And there is a Q&A with Myles Dungan, author of Land Is All That Matters: The Struggle That Shaped Irish History and director of this weekend’s Hinterland Kells history festival.

Reviews are Mark Hennessy on The Conservative Effect edited by Anthony Seldon and Tom Edgerton; Seamus Martin on To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power by Sergey Radchenko; Declan Ryan on the best new poetry collections; Paddy Woodworth on Radical Basque Nationalist-Irish Republican Relations: A History by Niall Cullen; Helena Mulkerns on The Body in the Library by Graham Caveney; Brigid O’Dea on I Love You, I Love You, I Love You by Laura Dockrill; Henrietta McKervey on Wild Geese by Soula Emmanuel; Kieran McConaghy on Homeland Insecurity: The Rise and Rise of Global Anti-terrorism law by Conor Gearty; John Boyne on Plaything by Bea Setton; Paschal Donohoe on Money and Promises: Seven Deals that Changed the World by Paolo Zannoni; and Adrienne Murphy on MILF: Motherhood, Identity, Love and F*ckery by Paloma Faith.

This Saturday’s Irish Times Eason offer is The Polite Act of Drowning by Charleen Hurtubise, just €5.99, a €5 saving.

David Nash has won the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize 2024, supported by the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast has announced.

Nash was announced as the winner for No Man’s Land, published by Dedalus Press, at the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast this evening. Nash was born in Co. Cork and lives between Ireland and Chile. A Spanish-language children’s book, Bajo Mis Pies, came out in 2020, as did two translations of books on the cultural history of Chile.

Nash said: “Seamus Heaney was the first poet of my life, in many ways, so to win a prize bearing his name is momentous to me both on a poetic and a personal level. I am extremely grateful to the Legacy Project, Queen’s and the Arts Council, and of course to the judges, for selecting my book and for seeing in it what I had hoped would be seen. It really means a great deal to me.”

This year’s judges were Prof Nick Laird, poet and Seamus Heaney Professor of Poetry at Queen’s; Jenny Browne, Professor of English and creative writing at Trinity University, Texas; and Stephen Sexton, poet and lecturer in poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s.

Laird said: “David Nash’s No Man’s Land is a book of return and renewal. Over and over the poems scrutinise modern Ireland with an insider’s easy familiarity and an outsider’s fresh perspective. Nash has technique in spades, a wry tone, an interest in formal ingenuity, and these poems set themselves ambitious aims which they invariably achieve.

The shortlist included Cowboy by Kandace Siobhan Walker (Cheerio Poetry); Crisis Actor by Declan Ryan (Faber); Before We Go Any Further by Tristram Fane Saunders (Carcanet); and Swimming Between Islands by Charlotte Eichler (Carcanet).

The Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize is awarded annually to a writer whose first full collection has been published in the preceding year, by a UK or Ireland-based publisher. The winning writer receives £5,000.

Novelist Noel O’Regan is the inaugural Literature Ireland writer-in-residence in Brno, Czech Republic as part of the CzechLit - Literature Ireland pilot residency exchange.

Sinéad Mac Aodha, director of Literature Ireland, said: “We are delighted to collaborate with our counterparts in CzechLit on this special writer exchange. We are confident that longer-term engagement with another culture through residency programmes result in better and deeper cultural experiences for the writers concerned, both in the making of new work and ultimately, also for their readers. Such residencies also provide an important opportunity for writers to meet with their counterparts and can generate further opportunities for literary exchange.”

O’Regan said: “I am excited to be provided with time to work on my writing, but also to experience the rich cultural life of Brno, which I will be visiting for the first time, and to engage with the broader Czech literary scene.”

O’Regan is from Co. Kerry. He is the recipient of a number of prizes, including an Arts Council Next Generation Award. His debut novel, Though the Bodies Fall, was shortlisted for Newcomer of the Year at the 2023 An Post Irish Book Awards, the 2024 James Tait Black Prize for Fiction and the John McGahern Prize for debut Irish fiction 2023.

The Czech edition of Though the Bodies Fall, Přitažlivost pádu, translated by the Ireland-based literary translator Alice Hyrmanová McElveen, was published by Odeon with the support of Literature Ireland.

O’Regan’s residency follows Czeck poet Marie Iljašenko’s residency in Cork in May. During her stay, Iljašenko worked on several new writing projects and was a guest at the Cork International Poetry Festival.

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Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon is going to be broadcast as BBC Radio 4′s Book at Bedtime for the first two weeks of July.

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Christodoulos Makris will be partnering with Poetry Ireland on two connected initiatives taking place this summer and autumn: He will be offering a guided tour (in person) of the exhibition Is this a poem? which he devised and curated at Museum of Literature Ireland until September 22nd; and will be leading a six-week (online) course entitled Poetry in the Contemporary World.

The Red Line Book Festival, an annual literary celebration, has announced an exciting opportunity for comedians. The festival, scheduled to take place from October 14th-20th, will feature a diverse program including panel workshops, theatre productions, children’s events and more.

The applications process is now open for the position of Comedian Writer in Residence to support the delivery of the festival program. This unique residency opportunity, wirth €5,000, is supported by South Dublin Libraries and Arts. The focus of this year’s residency is to nurture local talent in the art of stand-up comedy writing. Interested comedians are encouraged to submit their applications by July 17th and all details and criteria are outlined on the festival website redlinefestival.ie

English PEN has announced that author Arundhati Roy has been awarded the PEN Pinter Prize 2024. She will receive the award in a ceremony co-hosted by the British Library on October 10th, where she will deliver an address. Tickets are now available to purchase here.

The prize will be shared with a Writer of Courage: a writer who is active in defence of freedom of expression, often at great risk to their own safety and liberty. The co-winner, selected by Arundhati Roy from a shortlist of cases supported by English PEN, will be announced at the event.

Roy was chosen by this year’s judges: Chair of English PEN, Ruth Borthwick; actor and activist Khalid Abdalla; and writer and musician Roger Robinson.

Abdalla commented: ‘Arundhati Roy is a luminous voice of freedom and justice whose words have come with fierce clarity and determination for almost thirty years now. Her books, her writings, the spirit with which her life is lived, have been a lodestar through the many crises and the darkness our world has faced since her first book, The God of Small Things. This year, as the world faces the deep histories that have created this moment in Gaza, our need for writers who are “unflinching and unswerving” has been immense. In honouring Arundhati Roy this year, we are celebrating both the dignity of her body of work and the timeliness of her words, that arrive with the depth of her craft exactly when we need them most.’

Roy said: ‘I am delighted to accept the PEN Pinter prize. I wish Harold Pinter were with us today to write about the almost incomprehensible turn the world is taking. Since he isn’t, some of us must do our utmost to try to fill his shoes.’

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The John Hewitt Society, in partnership with Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann, has announced that 20 aspiring writers have been chosen for ‘Freedom to Write’, the creative writing initiative made possible by a grant from the Shared Island Civic Society Fund, Department of Foreign Affairs, Dublin.

This unique creative writing course will include workshops and a seven-day residential bursary place at the ‘John Hewitt International Summer School of Literature and the Arts Festival’ in Armagh.

Dr Frank Ferguson, chair of the John Hewitt Society, and Catherine Dunne, chair of Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann said: “We are delighted about this new partnership between the John Hewitt Society and Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann. John Hewitt was a great supporter of Irish PEN in his lifetime and it is gratifying to continue the tradition that he established and work together to create new opportunities for the writers of tomorrow”.

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The Gerard Manley Hopkins International Literary Festival will run from July 19th to 25th in Newbridge College Theatre, Co Kildare. As well as lectures on Hopkins in a broad context with speakers from countries including Wales, Britain, Germany, Japan, Italy, USA, France and Ireland, the festival will also provide music (classical concert with legendary Swedish pianist Hans Palsson on Friday 20th at 8pm; an art exhibition running the whole week with works by Desmond Morris, The Last Surrealist (Newbridge College, free); an International Poetry Celebration with poets from 10 countries at 5.30pm on July 23rd (Naas Town Hall). For more information visit gerardmanleyhopkins.org/ or contact 045 433613, abbottviv@gmail.com. Classical Concert €25 (€20 concessions); other events €10/ €5 (concessions) per event.

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Indian writer Sanjana Thakur has been announced as the overall winner of the world’s most global literature prize. The 26-year-old from Mumbai saw off 7,359 entrants worldwide to take the £5,000 prize.

The Commonwealth Foundation announced her win at an online ceremony, presented by New Zealand’s former Poet Laureate, Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh, in which Sanjana and the other four regional winners talk about their writing and read short extracts from their stories.

Taking its name from a famed Bollywood actress, Aishwarya Rai reimagines the traditional adoption story: a young woman, Avni, chooses between possible mothers housed in a local shelter. The first mother is too clean; the second, who looks like the real-life Aishwarya Rai, is too pretty. In her small Mumbai apartment with too-thin walls and a too-small balcony, Avni watches laundry turn round in her machine, dreams of stepping into white limousines, and tries out different mothers from the shelter. One of them must be just right…