Queen’s University Belfast declares shortlist for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize 2023

The winner will be announced at the Award Night readings in the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast later this month.

The Shortlist includes:

The English Summer, by Holly Hopkins (Penned in the Margins, 2022)

Slide, by Mark Pajak (Jonathan Cape, 2022)

The City, by Stav Poleg (Carcanet, 2022)

In Her Jaws, by Rosamund Taylor (Banshee Press, 2022)

Raised Among Vultures, by Molly Twomey (Gallery Press, 2022)

The Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize is awarded 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 and is invited to participate in the Seamus Heaney Centre’s busy calendar of literary events.

This year’s judges are Professor Nick Laird, poet and Seamus Heaney Professor of Poetry; Dr Leontia Flynn, poet and Reader in Poetry, and Dr Stephen Sexton, poet and lecturer in Poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s.

Speaking about the prize Professor Laird, Chair of the judging panel said: “We had an outstanding group of submissions for the Heaney prize this year, but in the end the shortlist was easy to assemble. These five debuts are all outstanding in different ways and speak to the depth and breadth of contemporary poetry.”

The winner will be announced and all writers will read at an event in the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast on Monday 26 June 2023, as part of the Seamus Heaney Poetry Summer School, supported by No Alibis Bookstore.