iYeats Results and Presentation

 

A busy day in Sligo today. I attended two lectures of the Yeats Summer School, the presentation and readings of the iYeats Poetry Competition and was filmed for a forthcoming TV history documentary.

The two lectures were: Joe Lee, New York University:  Yeats and History, and Keith Schuchard:  Swedenborg, Yeats, and Jacobite Freemasonry. More later on these maybe.

The iYeats presentation and reading, in the Hawk's Well Theatre, was enjoyable. It's great when the judge attends and says something about why he/she wnet about the task of choosing the winners.

Theo Dorgan and Paula Meehan were the judges and Theo was present. He spoke of how difficult it was and how long it took to choose a shortlist and then to choose a winner. They were looking for a sense of devotion to craft and clarity of language. The commended poems certainly displayed these qualities, he said, and he spoke about how the winning poem in the Open section created space between the lines.

The successful poets:
1st Prize - Open: Snow Falling, Lady Murasaki Watching by Richard Halperin
1st Prize - Emerging Talent: Dunyazade to Her Sister by Lyndsay McCabe

Highly Commended (in alphabetical order):
Being Bold at the Dunsink Observatory by Rachel Hegarty
Taking Simple Vows by Brian Kirk
A Beatitude by Anne O'Connell
On Doing Fourteen Lines by Breda Ryan
Silvered Now, and Fine by C. P. Stewart.

Richard, Rachel and Breda attended (pictured above with Theo) and read and the other poems were read by Hawk's Well staff and in the case of C.P. Stewart's by Richard Halperin. Lyndsay lives in New Yourk and sent a video file of her reading her winning poem.

You can read the poems on the iYeats website.

Thanks to Connie for her great comment below. Here is the link to the YouTube video of Lyndsay reading her winning poem.