Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Awards Night 2013

I had a very interesting night at the Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Awards.  I'd only just about found Saggart Heritage and Arts Centre, which is well disguised, (it's located below the church in a yellow building) when who pulled up but Frank Murphy of The Meath Writers' Circle and The Tara Poetry Blog.

 

So on to business.  Maria Wallace was the jugde and she was aided by Mervyn Ennis in MC duties.  The commended short stories were Boats by Des McInerney, Hayseeds by Patrick A. Gavin, A Sense of Duty by Stewart Devitt, Block Party by Joe McKiernan and Alice by John Martin. 3rd prize went to Tightly Knit by Doreen Duffy, 2nd place went to Vivienne Kearns for her story Escape and the overall winner was Andrew McLaughlin for his story A Found Object.  The stories I heard read were very classy and I was struck by some beautiful descriptive passages.

 

Commended in the poetry section were Noel King's 20 Park Lane Mews, Orla Donoghue's Twenty Minutes on a Luas, Kenneth Nolan's A Brown Pigeon, Susan Flynn's The Amoeba, Aine Lyons' Nora Barnacle's Wedding, AM Cousins' First Exit After Finglas, Clare O'Reilly's First Friday, Denise Ryan's Inside the Charity Shop and my own After M.C. Escher's Hands Drawing Hands.  In joint 3rd place were Elizabeth O'Carroll's  After Child in the Yard - Luis le Broquey and Frank Murphy's The Deep.  Second place went to Journey by John Power.  The over all winner was Clare O'Reilly, who also had a poem commneded, for her poem Salvation. 

I spoke to one member of the Virginia House Creative Writers' Group who told me that the group is named after Virginia Woolf.  They meet every Friday.  You can find out more about the literary scene in Saggart and Tallaght here http://www.ruared.ie/virginia.html

It's Sylvia Plath's birthday today.