The joint winners of the 2023 Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition are Partridge Boswell and Gwen Sayers. We have also highlighted the finalists and highly commended entries below. Their chapbooks will be launched at the 2024 Cork International Poetry Festival (18th May).
Joint Winners
Levis Corner House by Partridge Boswell
VT, USA
Author of the Grolier Poetry Prize-winning collection Some Far Country, Partridge Boswell is co-founder of Bookstock Literary Festival and teaches at Vallum Society for Education in Arts & Letters in Montreal. His poems have recently found homes in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Southword and The Moth. He lives with his family in Vermont and troubadours widely with the poetry/music group Los Lorcas, whose debut release Last Night in America is available on Thunder Ridge Records. His Saguaro Prize-winning chapbook Not Yet a Jedi is also now a thing.
Ghost Sojourn by Gwen Sayers
london, england
Gwen Sayers worked as a doctor in South Africa, Seattle, and London where she lives. Her poetry has been published widely in magazines and anthologies, most recently, Propel Magazine Issue 9 (Ed. Fran Lock), Acumen, DMQ Review, Unbroken Journal, Right Hand Pointing, and Tears in the Fence. She won First Prize in the Magma Poetry Competition in 2022, and has been a Forward Prize nominee for best single poem.
Finalists
Also Become Real by Heather Gluck
NY, USA
Heather Gluck is a poet and editor from New York who received her MFA from Columbia University. Her work is published in Anthropocene, Palette Poetry, and Anti-Heroin Chic, among others. She was named runner up in the 2023 Ledbury Poetry Competition and in the 2023 New Orleans Review Poetry Contest. She won the 2022 Crosswinds Poetry Contest, and was named second runner up in the 2021 Tennessee Williams Writing Contest. She has served as editor in chief of the literary magazines Exchange and Some Kind of Opening, and as a reader for the Adroit Journal and the Columbia Journal. She is the managing editor for MAYDAY and an associate editor at Majuscule. See more at heathergluck.com
In the Palace of My Gender by Darla Himeles
PA, USA
Darla Himeles (they/she) is a Philadelphia-based poet. They are the author of the chapbook Flesh Enough and the full-length poetry collection Cleave, both published by Get Fresh Books. Her poems and essays have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and can be read in recent and forthcoming issues of Lesbians are Miracles, The Gay & Lesbian Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Night Heron Barks, Honey Literary, and American Poetry Review. They hold a PhD in American literature from Temple University, where they work as the assistant director of the Writing Center. Find Darla on Instagram @darlahimelespoetry and read more at darlahimelespoetry.com.
After Making Love by Mary Beth Hines
MA, USA
Mary Beth Hines is the author of Winter at a Summer House (Kelsay Books, 2021). A Massachusetts (US) resident, she earned a Bachelor of Arts from The College of the Holy Cross and studied at Durham University in England. She is an alumna of the Colrain Manuscript Conference, and a recipient of an Assets for Artists workshop residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Her manuscript Touch Anything was named a finalist in Comstock Review’s 2023 Jessie Bryce Niles Chapbook contest. Her poetry appears in Cider Press Review, The Lake, Tar River Poetry, Valparaiso, and elsewhere. Visit her at www.marybethhines.com.
There is nothing more beautiful that language can offer by Patrick Holloway
Cork, Ireland
Patrick Holloway is the winner of The Bath Short Story Prize, The Molly Keane Creative Writing Competition, The Flash 500 Prize, the Allingham Fiction Prize, among others. He was second in The Raymond Carver Short Story contest, was highly commended for the Manchester Fiction Prize and shortlisted for many prizes including The Bath Short Story Prize, Moth Short Story Prize, Bath Flash Fiction Prize, and the prestigious Alpine Fellowship for Fiction. His work has appeared in Southword, The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, The Irish Independent, Carve, The London Magazine, The Moth, and many others. He is an editor of the literary journal, The Four Faced Liar.
23 Souvenirs From All The Places We Were Found by Lucy Holme
Cork, Ireland
Lucy Holme is a PhD student and creative writing teacher living in Cork. Her work features in PN Review, Poetry Ireland, The Pig’s Back, The Stinging Fly, Banshee, The London Magazine, and Southword amongst others. Her debut chapbook, Temporary Stasis (Broken Sleep 2022) was shortlisted for The Patrick Kavanagh Award and her debut essay collection is forthcoming from Broken Sleep in Autumn 2024. She is co-editor of The Four Faced Liar literary journal.
Wearing the Night by Wes Lee
Wellington, New Zealand
Originally from the UK, Wes Lee now lives in New Zealand. She has three poetry collections and her work has appeared in an array of literary journals, including, Southword, The North, The Stinging Fly, Best New Zealand Poems, The London Magazine, Magma, Poetry London. She has won a number of awards for her writing. Most recently she was awarded the Heroines/Joyce Parkes Women’s Writing Prize 2022, in Australia. Shortlisted for the Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award 2023 (Otago University Press), and The Poetry London Pamphlet Prize 2023.
The Woman Who Used To Bleed by Lorraine McArdle
Dublin, Ireland
Lorraine Mc Ardle was awarded the Poetry Prize at Listowel Writer’s Week in 2022, and Highly Commended in the 2022 Fool For Poetry Chapbook Competition and the 2019 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. She is widely published including Poetry Ireland Review, The Irish Independent, The North, Southword, Strix, The Interpreter’s House, Obsessed with Piperwork, Skylight 47 and Drawn to the Light. She was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series in 2019.
Forever Searching by Alison McCrossan
Cork, Ireland
Alison McCrossan is from Cork. Publications include Southword, Stand, Orbis, The Honest Ulsterman, Abridged, and Trasna. She was longlisted in The National Poetry Competition 2022 and shortlisted in The Bridport Poetry Prize 2023.
Thin Places and Other Poems by Kathleen McCoy
NY, USA
Kathleen McCoy teaches college writing in upstate New York. Her poems have appeared in The Mizmor Anthology, Galway Review, Beyond Words, Mom Egg Review, jelly bucket, and other publications, and her poetry has been short-listed and long-listed for other international prizes including the Fish International Poetry Prize, the Discovery Prize, the Dana Awards, the Book Excellence Awards, and a Fulbright. Her books include Green and Burning, More Water Than Words, and Ringing the Changes.