Munster Literature Centre
Ionad Litríochta an Deisceart

Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition Results

The winner of the 2022 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition, Jenny Mitchell, will read her winning poem When Our Mother Dies along with a selection of her other work on 20th May 2023 at the Cork International Poetry Festival. We have also highlighted the first, second and third prize winners as well as finalists (whose poems will appear in the next issue of Southword) and highly commended entries below. The judge Suji Kwock Kim selected these poems from over 1900 entries.

First Prize

When Our Mother Dies by Jenny Mitchell

London, England

Jenny Mitchell won the Poetry Book Awards in 2021 for her 2nd collection, Map of a Plantation, which is on the syllabus at Manchester Metropolitan University. The best-selling debut collection, Her Lost Language, is One of 44 Poetry Books for 2019 (Poetry Wales), and her latest collection, Resurrection of a Black Man, is a Poetry Kit Book of the Month. She has won several competitions and is widely-published. 

Second Prize

Burying Grandfather by Yesol Kim

New York, USA

Yesol Kim is a student of literature. She lives in New York.

Third Prize

Never by Judith H. Montgomery

Oregon, USA

Judith H. Montgomery’s poems appear in the Bellingham Review, Tahoma Literary Review, and Poet Lore, among other journals. She’s been awarded several residencies and fellowships. Her chapbook Passion received the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her second full-length collection, Litany for Wound and Bloom, appeared in 2018. Her prize-winning narrative medicine chapbook, Mercy, appeared from Wolf Ridge Press in 2019.


Finalists

Small Towns by Peggie Gallagher

Sligo, Ireland

Cries of the Loon by Galin Elias Franklin

Madrid, Spain

The Stones of Childhood Are Hard to Chew by Kizziah Burton

Texas, usa

The Washpoosh Man by Greg Rappleye

Michigan, USA

Extinction by Luisa A. Igloria

Virginia, USA

Alphabet for a New Life by Nathalie Abi-Ezzi

Kent, England

Cilliní by Peggie Gallagher

Sligo, Ireland

To the Muse of Zeros by Blair Ewing

Maryland, USA

For my younger children: a reminder of the far-flung diversity of your identities in the language of geography and theoretical physics by Simon Peter Eggertsen

Quebec, Canada

On the Night of Your Deployment by Gary V. Powell

North Carolina, USA

Highly Commended

What Thoughts I Have of You Tonight Allen Ginsberg by Phyllis Witte

New York, USA

Divination by Stephen Spratt

Cork, Ireland

Emotional Geology by Romola Parish

Wales

Harvest by Anne Marie Connolly

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

The Lecture on Decolonialism by J.S. Westbrook

Kazakhstan

Sheela-na-Gig at Kilnaboy Church by Deirdre Devally

Clare, Ireland

The Day After Easter by Jason Gray

North Carolina, USA

Tallyman by Anne Marie Connolly

Edinburgh, Scotland

A Latin American Sonnet LXXV by Leonardo Boix

Kent, England

Back Then by Polly Walshe

Oxford, England

we come from old iran by Majed Albanna

London, England