We begin the week with a look at the winner of the inaugural Yeats Poetry Prize, the 2023 Poet Laureate Fellows in America and the Tweet mistakenly attributed to a deceased poet.
Winner of the Inaugural Yeats Poetry Prize Announced
Sara Berkley has been named as the winner of the inaugural Yeats Poetry Prize for “The Last Cold Day”. The collection chronicles the poet’s life working as a nurse in a hospice, her move across America from California to New York and also takes a look at the threat posed by climate change.
Berkley, who is a poet born in Dublin, was awarded the prize by the Yeats Society Sligo. The award which is sponsored by the Irish Independent is a prestigious one that is open to entries of new poetry collections, entries need to have been written by Irish poets in English. The prize is worth €3,000.
Berkley was educated at Trinity College Dublin before moving to California where she studied at the University of California, Berkeley. She lived in California for 30 years before making the move with her husband to New York.
Born in Dublin in 1967, Berkeley was educated at Trinity College Dublin and the University of California, Berkeley.
She lived in California for 30 years before moving to upstate New York with her husband, a geographical move that also plays a part in the book.
The Yeats Poetry Prize is dedicated to helping maintain the rich history of poetry in Ireland and also carrying on the legacy of WB Yeats by encouraging up-and-coming poets in the way Yeats did. This is the only prize of its kind in Ireland. The timing of the inaugural prize marks the centenary of the poet’s Nobel Prize for Literature, which he received in 1923.
2023 Poet Laureate Fellows Announced by Academy of American Poets
23 poets have been named by the Academy of American Poets as their Poet Laureate Fellows for 2023. They are the individuals who will serve as poet laureates in cities, states and countries across the US. It will be their responsibility to lead programmes of poetry for the public. Each one of the 23 nominated poets will be given an award of $50,000 to support their work.
The work that they will be doing is not only sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, but also by the Mellon Foundation and a number of non-profit organisations who work to fund the really important work that the programme undertakes each year.
Confusion at Poet’s Tweet Following Death of Singer
Following the breaking of the news that the singer Sinead O’Connor had died last week at the age of 56, a number of news outlets created confusion. The confusion arose when they reported that Irish poet Seamus Heaney had posted a tribute to the singer on Twitter.
Heaney, a Nobel Laureate poet, died 10 years ago. The Tweet, which began, “A great Irish poet and singer left us today”, was, in fact, posted by a fan page for Heaney, which regularly shares poems and quotes from the poet.
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