Poetry Prize 2019: Results, Short & Long-lists.

Winners

Here are the 10 winning poems, as chosen by judge Billy Collins, to be published in the Fish Anthology 2019

The Fish Anthology 2019 will be launched as part of the West Cork Literary Festival (July 2019).
All of the writers published in the Anthology are invited to read at the launch.

Top 10 stories will be published in the FISH ANTHOLOGY 2019.
1st prize: €1,000
2nd: a week in residence at Anam Cara Writer’s and Artist’s Retreat.
3rd:€200

Billy Collins

Comments on the top 3 winning poems are from Billy Collins (below), who we sincerely thank for lending his time and experience to judge the prize.

Congratulations to the nine winning poets (one of the poets, Alex Grant, has two poems selected) and also to the poets whose poems made the short-list of 56, and to the poets who made the long-list of 183. Total entry was 1,641.

The overall winning poem Not My Michael Furey, by A.M. Cousins (link).
More about the nine winning poets (link).

The Ten Winners:

Selected by poet, Billy Collins, to be published in the Fish Anthology 2019

FIRST
Anne Cousins	Not My Michael Furey
SECOND
Stephen de Búrca	The Morning I Read Yesterday’s ‘Daily Mirror’
THIRD
Colette Tennant	Rehearsals

HONORARY MENTIONS
Judith Janoo	Sugar Kelp
Kerry Rawlinson	Kindling
Soma Mei Sheng Frazier	No Results for that Place
Alex Grant	Raiding my Dead Mother-in-Law’s Pharmaceuticals
Alex Grant	That One Time I Decided To Be All About Eschewing Obfuscation
Leah C Stetson	Capes and Daggers
John Michael Ruskovich	Tequila Sunrise?

BILLY COLLIN’S COMMENTS ON THE TOP THREE:

Not My Michael Furey by Anne Cousins

‘After immediately contextualizing itself with its reference to Joyce’s “The Dead,” this poem uses a deceptively simple diction to invite the reader into the mind and heart of its charmingly girlish narrator. Not a word is wasted in the clean, spare lines of this beguiling, bittersweet poem.’ – Billy Collins

The Morning I Read Yesterday’s ‘Daily Mirror’ by Stephen de Búrca

‘A clever take-off on Frank O’Hara’s startlingly everyday elegy for Billie Holiday, this poem even looks like the original. It’s most like O’Hara’s in that the elegy becomes the moment of the news (both in newspapers) of death, rather than a later meditation on the significance of the loss. The poem’s finest accomplishment is the delicate balance it maintains between the levity of satire and the gravity of the loss of an irreplaceable person.’ – Billy Collins

Rehearsals by Colette Tennant

‘Two stanzas are just the right form for this poem which moves from regrets about one’s mother to the more venial sins of childhood before circling back to the hypnotized mother’s vision of her own dying. Remorse may run wild, but the fresh images (“snot-angry bull,” “gaudy apple”) stabilize this unsettling and nicely unresolved poem.’ – Billy Collins

WINNING POEM:

Not my Michael Furey

by Anne Cousins

After James Joyce.

While the girls watched the boys kick a ball

on a scuffed patch of earth behind the school,

I hid in the pre-fab hut that served

as library and refuge to the bashful.

There was shelter among chipboard shelves

where books offered solace to a child

weary of feigning interest in the chatter

of fashion and elusive boyfriends.

Here were English girls learning life-lessons

in progressive boarding-schools; young women

in the Chalet novels bravely dodged Nazis;

and Miss Heyer’s Regency heroines –

all sprig muslin and beribboned bonnets –

were tastefully romanced by young bucks,

with chequered pasts and endless supplies

of starched cravats, who drove fast phaetons

and could tame a giddy young filly

with one smouldering, masterful glance.

Sometimes I saw a boy near the Crime shelf –

barely thirteen, fingers and teeth nicotined

as a man’s. Once we talked and he held out

his yellow hands to show their tremor –

he suffered with the nerves – he liked a thriller,

a mystery to solve, Poirot was the best.

I preferred Miss Marple’s investigations

among the murdering genteel classes.

If I ever thought of him after that

I would have imagined him on his tractor,

the cab filled with smoke as he turned the sod

in neat lines on his father’s beet-field.

Some years later, my mother wrote me –

the priest had called his name at mass,

requested prayers for his soul’s repose;

she heard the talk at the chapel-gate –

he was found in the barn, no mystery

how his life of hardship came to an end.

He was not my Michael Furey, never

my tender young love but I think of him

often – in a makeshift library long ago,

wits pitted against a fictional detective

and a small, shy girl for company.

MORE ABOUT THE WINNERS:

ANNE COUSINS was born in 1958 and has lived most of her life in Wexford Town. The arrival of her first grandchild in 2013 brought the realization that she was not getting any younger and she decided to run away and join the MA (Creative Writing) class in UCD. Her plan to write a perfect short story was scuppered by her conversion to poetry. She is working on her first collection and her work can be found in various literary magazines including Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, and on the website Poethead.

STEPHEN DE BÚRCA is working towards an MFA in poetry at the University of Florida under the guidance of Ange Mlinko. From Galway City, Stephen has worked at art-residencies in Iceland and the Netherlands. His poetry has previously appeared in publications such as Crannóg and Skylight47.

COLETTE TENNANT, along with being an English Professor, plays keyboard in a garage band with a twenty-two-year-old drummer and a millionaire on the sax. At her university, she leads a group of student poets called Stinky Bagels. She lives in Oregon, one hour from the Cascade Mountains to the east, one hour from the Pacific Ocean to the west. Her most recent book, Religion in The Handmaid’s Tale: a Brief Guide will be published in September, 2019. On a recent DNA test, she found out she’s 80% Irish.

JUDITH JANOO lives in Vermont, US, near the Canadian border where the smoke plume from her chimney goes straight up on cold days. She grew up by the sea rowing a dinghy before she rode a bike. Teaching yoga nidra, she sometimes puts others to sleep, which is not her intention in poetry. She sings to warblers and chickadees in the voice she hears, and thinks that they are singing back.

Decades ago, autodidact & bloody-minded optimist KERRY RAWLINSON gravitated from sunny Zambian skies to solid Canadian soil, nurturing family and a career in Architectural Design. Fast-forward: she follows Literature & Art’s Muses around the glorious Okanagan, still barefoot, her patient husband ensuring she’s fed. Her photo-artwork, poetry & flash fiction have won contests, and feature in international literary publications. Kerry has become addicted to Canadian snowscapes; but she still pines for Zambian avacados. http://kerryrawlinson.tumblr.com/; @kerryrawli

SOMA MEI SHENG FRAZIER, like the speaker in No Results for that Place, is between homes—relocating from California, where she’s served as a San Francisco Library Laureate, to New York, for a professorship at SUNY Oswego. Frazier’s sweet tooth demands sugar in everything but poetry and prose. Her work has earned nods from authors and entities ranging from Nikki Giovanni to Daniel Handler; HBO and Zoetrope: All-Story to Glimmer Train and the Mississippi Review.

ALEX GRANT has been a shepherd, a dental technician, a rope-maker, an electro-plater, an optical technician, a software applications developer and a Business Solutions Architect. He has released five poetry collections and has received The Pavel Srut Poetry Fellowship, The Kakalak Poetry Prize, The Randall Jarrell Chapbook Prize and The Oscar Arnold Young Award. He was included in Best New Poets 2007. A native Scot, he lives in North Carolina with his wife, his dangling participles and his Celtic fondness for excess.

LEAH C STETSON writes poetry at Nixie’s Vale beside a black-ash seep and a vortex. Eco-heroine and spiritual mermaid, Leah’s love of writing spawned at the mouth of the Sheepscot River in Maine. She holds a master’s degree in human ecology. Her writing has appeared in Arsenic Lobster, Off the Coast, Sea Stories: the Littoral Issue. Leah is a Research Fellow in the Interdisciplinary PhD program at University of Maine in a tenacious pursuit of deep, Romantic ecology.

JOHN MICHAEL RUSKOVICH “Mike” Ruskovich taught high school English in northern Idaho for 36 years, and now he lives with his wife on the Camas Prairie near Grangeville, ID. His poetry has appeared in The Classical Poets Society journal, and his song lyrics appear throughout the novel Idaho, written by his daughter and published by Random House in 2017. Her essay about his poetry, titled “The Weight of My Father’s Poems,” can be found on LitHub.

Short-list:

(alphabetical order)

There are 56 poems in the short-list. The total entry was 1,641.

TITLE	FIRST NAME	LAST NAME
Kintsukuroi	Gail	Anderson
Observation	Valerie	Bence
Nancy saw you dancing	Jackie	Bennett
No natural law	Jackie	Bennett
Out There In The Rain	Carole	Berkson
Ode to Sex with You	Michelle	Bitting
Pinball	Dean	Browne
Requiem	patricia	cantwell
Not my Michael Furey	A.M.	Cousins
A Poet’s Guide to Photography: The Bokeh	Johnna	Crawford
The Morning I Read Yesterday’s ‘Daily Mirror’	Stephen	de Búrca
Seasalted	Elaine	Desmond
MAN POEM WITH A KNIFE	Judy	Durrant
Blackout	Diane	Fahey
Climate Change	Mary	Fitzpatrick
No Results for That Place	Soma Mei Sheng	Frazier
octopus in the room	Dean	Gessie
Raiding My Dead Mother-in-Law’s Pharmaceuticals	Alex	Grant
That One Time I Decided To Be All About Eschewing Obfuscation	Alex	Grant
Minutiae	Rosalind	Hudis
Room 764	Peter	Hudson
Ringing the Changes	Steven	Jackson
Sugar Kelp	Judith	Janoo
Man of Ice	PETER UALRIG	KENNEDY
CLOSER	Stacey	Lawrence
Doctor	Zachary	Loewenstein
Her Father	Niamh	MacCabe
Stark’s Ink	Niamh	MacCabe
How We Remember Our Bones	John	MacDonald
Upon The Hill	Lindsey	McLeod
Late Hydrangea	Lorraine	McLeod
writing bloomsbury 1924	Norm	Neill
At Loughborough Junction…	Christopher	North
She’s Wonderful	Michael	O’Connor
Readers’ Night at the London Review Bookshop	Judy	O’Kane
Closing Time	Matthew	Oliver
Annie	Patricia	Osborne
kindling	Kerry	Rawlinson
Metamorphosis	Lee	Romer Kaplan
Listening for your return	Elizabeth	Rose
Tequila Sunrise?	John Michael	Ruskovich
The Dark Gatherer	Kim	Schroeder
Capes and Daggers	Leah	Stetson
Robert Hugh	Anne	Taylor
Rehearsals	Colette	Tennant
The Bends	Roger	Vickery
Tandem	Dana	Walrath
Rumination	Angela	Washington
Halter	Grace	Wilentz
The Ring	Sarah	Wimbush
Luger, 1948	Guinotte	Wise
Asleep Before The Fire Dies	Aram	Wool
Roundabouts	Dorothy	Yamamoto
The House of Fiction	James	Bowden
Walking on Edinburgh Hill	Lynda	McDonald

Long-list:

(alphabetical order)

There are 183 poems in the long-list. The total entry was 1,641.

TITLE	FIRST NAME	LAST NAME
Well Lived	Lynda	Allen
Death of an Anchorman	Savkar	Altinel
Kintsukuroi	Gail	Anderson
When I was young and buildings were already old	Karen	Ashe
God must be a polyglot	Karen	Ashe
Decompression	Debbie	Bayne
Green Hall	John	Beaton
bedtime reading	Taylor	Bell
Observation	Valerie	Bence
Nancy saw you dancing	Jackie	Bennett
No natural law	Jackie	Bennett
Out There In The Rain	Carole	Berkson
Ode to Sex with You	Michelle	Bitting
Portmanteau	Sharon	Black
Hearing Joni	Denise	Blake
Upon Hearing Amy Winehouse at St. James Church in Dingle	Partridge	Boswell
Prayer	Partridge	Boswell
Pinball	Partridge	Boswell
Singing School	Partridge	Boswell
The Optimist Files	Partridge	Boswell
The House of Fiction	James	Bowden
Auld Lang Syne	Susan	Browne
Pinball	Dean	Browne
In Tarry Flynn’s Shoes	Mary	Campbell
Requiem	Patricia	Cantwell
A kiss and a girl	Veronica	Casey
Magnolia Wall	Veronica	Casey
Road Kill	Helen	Chinitz
Autism	Leo	Cole Snider
The Lighthouse	Colette	Colfer
Special Red	Briony	Collins
Moth	Briony	Collins
The Poem That Was Never Meant To Be	Daniel Roy	Connelly
Too Big For This World	Alexandra	Corrin-Tachibana
A Sighting	Christine	Cote
WAKE, Midwinter 1980	A.M.	Cousins
Not my Michael Furey	A.M.	Cousins
Angels and Witches	Ann	Craig
A Poet’s Guide to Photography: The Bokeh	Johnna	Crawford
Beautiful Lofty Things	C	DALLAT
If Dogs Had Hands	Claudia	Daventry
Crépuscule	Claudia	Daventry
The Morning I Read Yesterday’s ‘Daily Mirror’	Stephen	de Búrca
Seasalted	Elaine	Desmond
Breastfeed	Koraly	Dimitriadis
Requiem	Marylou	DiPietro
Gravediggers’ Strike, New York, 1970	Susan	DuMond
MAN POEM WITH A KNIFE	Judy	Durrant
After Learning that Derek Killed Himself, I Remember	Teresa	Dzieglewicz
in the shadows of the past	Jo	Ellis
Blackout	Diane	Fahey
Choices	Laila	Farnes
The Superintendent’s Report	Frank	Farrelly
Goreme (and elsewhere)	Michael	Farren
How to	Stephanie	Feeney
Epiphany	Peter J	Filkins
TURN AROUND	Steven	Finley
between the silences	James	Finnegan
Climate Change	Mary	Fitzpatrick
Will You Please	Lili	Flanders
a small poem	Danielle	Fontaine
No Results for That Place	Soma Mei Sheng	Frazier
Leviathan	Maureen	Gallagher
octopus in the room	Dean	Gessie
The Metaphysics of Flight	Carmine	Giordano
Hazel the Color (An Irish Song)	Ellen	Girardeau
Cosmic Joke	Alex	Grant
Raiding My Dead Mother-in-Law’s Pharmaceuticals	Alex	Grant
That One Time I Decided To Be All About Eschewing Obfuscation	Alex	Grant
Late-Night Gardening	Jonathan	Greenhause
How We’re Methodically Picked Off	Jonathan	Greenhause
Proposal in Alappuzha	Shay	Griffin
Identity	Arlene	Grubbs
And your text said	Stuart	Handysides
Three Questions for the Buddha	David	Hargreaves
Gull-Woman	David	Hargreaves
That Feeling When…California is on Fire	Matt	Hohner
Minutiae	Rosalind	Hudis
Room 764	Peter	Hudson
Your Feet (A Lament)	Isabel	Huggan
The Names of Seaweed and Collective Nouns for Birds	Mandy	Huggins
Dressing Room	Penelope	Hughes
Eurydice	Garrett	Igoe
Ringing the Changes	Steven	Jackson
Sugar Kelp	Judith	Janoo
The Missing	Des	Kavanagh
The Venus Effect	John D.	Kelly
Dance of the Machete	Sarah	Kelly
Man of Ice	PETER UALRIG	KENNEDY
In Traction	Jay	Kidd
Vermont Moment	Mel	Konner
The Politics of Seeing	Judith	Krause
The London Ladies Pond in February	Judith	Krause
Last Days	Francesca	La Nave
Hiding from Daddy	Ashley	Lancaster
SPARED	Stacey	Lawrence
CLOSER	Stacey	Lawrence
Forgotten Things	Sarah	Levine
The Butcher’s Thumbs	Deborah	Livingstone
Doctor	Zachary	Loewenstein
Opossum Nights	sandra	longley
Her Father	Niamh	MacCabe
Stark’s Ink	Niamh	MacCabe
How We Remember Our Bones	John	MacDonald
Astronautical	Anna	Mae
Diving	Jessica	Malcom
Mornings At Carrowniskey	Kilcoyne	Marian
FINDING JOYCE	JOHN	MCCABE
Half-Mass	Kevin	McCarthy
Five Seven Five	Lynda	McDonald
Tokens	Lynda	McDonald
Cartier-Bresson takes Sunday Communion	Lynda	McDonald
Walking on Edinburgh Hill	Lynda	McDonald
Prairie 1861	Christine	McDonough
Wonder	Lorraine	McLeod
Upon The Hill	Lindsey	McLeod
Late Hydrangea	Lorraine	McLeod
Indigo	Bruce	Meyer
Ants	Bruce	Meyer
The Best Time to Grow a Beard	Bruce	Meyer
The Bell Ringer of Iturbide	Bruce	Meyer
Encounter	sally	michaelson
Ledes	Philip	Miller
i was home when it arrived	Paul	Mullen
Almost	Carla	Myers
writing bloomsbury 1924	Norm	Neill
Small Craft Advisories	Bo	Niles
At Loughborough Junction…	Christopher	North
Winter: Two Mornings	Bridget	O’Bernstein
She’s Wonderful	Michael	O’Connor
Compass / Witch	Laurence	O’Dwyer
Right of Way	Judy	O’Kane
Garryvoe	Judy	O’Kane
Readers’ Night at the London Review Bookshop	Judy	O’Kane
Closing Time	Matthew	Oliver
Postcard from Galway	Colette	Olney
Evening at Kuerners	Patricia	Osborne
Annie	Patricia	Osborne
Dior	Romola	Parish
Alone in the Kitchen	Anthony	Powers
The One Word I Can’t Seem to Say	Grace	Qualls
Formica	Maggie	Rainey-Smith
Quarryman	Olivia	Rana
kindling	Kerry	Rawlinson
Opposites	Howard	Robertson
Metamorphosis	Lee	Romer Kaplan
Listening for your return	Elizabeth	Rose
At the US Immigration Desk, New York City	Julie-ann	Rowell
Tequila Sunrise?	John Michael	Ruskovich
The Dark Gatherer	Kim	Schroeder
Au Moulin de la Galette	Derek	Sellen
On the Birth of Hades	Dean	Shaban
Middle School	Derek	Sheffield
Her Present	Derek	Sheffield
Geometry Angels	Stuart	Smith
Dear Love	Lisa	St John
The Breach	Larry	Stapleton
Clothesemane	vincent	steed
Capes and Daggers	Leah	Stetson
Wind in a Box	Andrea	Stock
robert hugh	Anne	Taylor
MOURNING SONG	Avery	Taylor Moore
Thankful I Find Her Anyway	Colette	Tennant
Rehearsals	Colette	Tennant
The Poet	Ann	Thompson
Through flame	Samuel	Ugbechie
Once again	Samuel	Ugbechie
The Bends	Roger	Vickery
Seascape	rob	wallis
Tandem	Dana	Walrath
To See	Andrea	Ward
Rumination	Angela	Washington
The Plain in Flames	Christopher	Watson
Ghost of a Flea	Dominic	Weston
The Irish Hunger Memorial, Battery Park	Grace	Wilentz
Coral Castle	Grace	Wilentz
Halter	Grace	Wilentz
The Ring	Sarah	Wimbush
Marram	Elisabeth	Winkler
As If There Were More Than One	William	Winston
Do Not Touch	Sandra Ann	Winters
Anthurium	Sandra Ann	Winters
Luger, 1948	Guinotte	Wise
Asleep Before The Fire Dies	Aram	Wool
Alhambra	Raphael	Woolf
Imagining the Lares	Steve	Xerri
Roundabouts	Dorothy	Yamamoto

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Altergeist – a novel by Tim Booth

You only know who you can’t trust. You can’t trust the law, because there’s none in New Ireland. You can’t trust the Church, because they think they’re the law. And you can’t trust the State, because they think they’re the Church And most of all, you can’t trust your friends, because you can’t remember who they were anymore.

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Small City Blues numbers 1 to 51 – a novel by Martin Kelleher

A memoir of urban life, chronicled through its central character, Mackey. From momentary reflections to stories about his break with childhood and adolescence, the early introduction to the Big World, the discovery of romance and then love, the powerlessness of ordinary people, the weaknesses that end in disappointment and the strengths that help them seek redemption and belonging.

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The Woman Who Swallowed the Book of Kells – Collection of Short Stories by Ian Wild

Ian Wild’s stories mix Monty Python with Hammer Horror, and the Beatles with Shakespeare, but his anarchic style and sense of humour remain very much his own in this collection of tall tales from another planet. Where else would you find vengeful organs, the inside story of Eleanor Rigby, mobile moustaches, and Vikings looting a Cork City branch of Abracababra?

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Poetry Prize 2019: Results, Short & Long-lists.

Winners

Here are the 10 winning poems, as chosen by judge Billy Collins, to be published in the Fish Anthology 2019

The Ten Winners:

Not my Michael Furey

Short-list:

Long-list:

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