The winner of the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition, Anthony Lawrence, will read his winning poem Seeing Red along with a selection of his other work on 16th May at the 2026 Cork International Poetry Festival (website will be updated with this year’s programme at the end of February).
Below, we have highlighted the first, second and third prize winners as well as (in alphabetical order) finalists whose poems will appear in the next issue of Southword. The judge Dean Browne selected these poems from 2355 entries.
First Prize
Seeing Red by Anthony Lawrence
queensland, australia
Anthony Lawrence has published nineteen collections of poems and a novel. His books and individual poems have won a number of awards, including the Australian Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry, the Ginkgo prize for Eco poetry and the New South Wales Premiers Award. He lives on Moreton Bay, Queensland.
Second Prize
Self Portrait as Last Russian in Space by Olga Mexina
Florida, USA
Olga Mexina is a writer and translator. Born in what is now St. Petersburg, Russia, she lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where she is a PhD candidate at Florida State University and Interviews Editor for Southeast Review. Mexina’s poetry was a finalist in Narrative’s Sixteenth Annual Poetry Contest, The Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition in 2024, the 2025 Bridport Prize, the 2025 ALTA Travel Fellowship, and was an Editors’ Final Round Pick for the 2024 Plentitudes Poetry Prize. Mexina’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Narrative, Boulevard, Red Wheelbarrow, and elsewhere, and her translations have appeared in various magazines including Asymptote, Resistance and Opposition Arts Review, and Angime. Her book of translations of the Russian poet Boris Ryzhy is forthcoming from Zephyr Press in early 2027.
Third Prize
Biophoton by Andrew Gebhardt
Duivendrecht, Netherlands
Andrew Gebhardt is a writer, editor, and teacher living in the Netherlands. He holds a PhD in anthropology and over the years has worked as a a high school Spanish teacher, a reproductive health counsellor, and a poet-in-the-schools. Holland Flowering, his non-fiction book about the Dutch horticultural industry, was recommended by Lawrence Weschler, Mark Doty, and Christopher Ryan, and came out in 2014. In recent years, he has published translations of the Brazilian writer, Lédo Ivo.