THE winner of this year's National Poetry Competition is Kerry Hardie (45), of Co Kilkenny, for her poem She Replies to Carmel's Letter. This is the first time that the prize - now in its fifth year - has been won by a woman.
The prize of £1,000 was presented by the President, Mrs Robinson, at a ceremony held yesterday at the Dublin Writers' Museum in Parnell Square.
A new prize of £250, for the best poem by an unpublished author, was presented to Conor Carville of Co Armagh for Minerva. A law graduate of TCD, Mr Carville is currently reading English at Oxford.
"I'm pleased that this support and sponsorship exists to encourage the voices that don't always find it easy to make the breakthrough," said Mrs Robinson. "Writing is an engagement from within that can involve barriers, economic and otherwise."
She paid tribute to Poetry Ireland for its administration of the competition, and to the sponsors, Friends Provident Life Assurance Company. Judging the competition - which attracted a record number of 2,700 entries this year - must have been "a labour of love". The judges were the poets Eavan Boland, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill and Ciaran Carson.
Theo Dorgan, director of Poetry Ireland, said the President had made "the passion of poetry" a "keynote of her presidency".
Kerry Hardie, who grew up in Co Down, published her first collection of poetry, A Furious Place (Gallery Press), to much acclaim earlier this year. Her winning poem begins with an apt description of the season: "It was a mild Christmas, the small fine rain kept washing over" and is a moving evocation of how "the ease of low wet things" on the Dingle peninsula revitalises an ill person.
Ms Hardie said that although the world of literature was usually seen as "a closed shop, allergic to women", her own experience had been very different.
"I'm proud beyond words to receive this prize from President Robinson, who has worked tirelessly to make her vision of inclusivity a reality."