Awards for young poets

THE HAWK’S WELL Theatre has announced the winners of the Children’s Poet of the Year competition. The competition runs annually in the run up to Yeats Day and is a celebration of the poet, dramatist and prose writer. Children are tasked with writing a verse with the same title as a Yeats poem, and this year’s theme was ‘The Cat & The Moon’.

The competition, which launched last month, saw a huge response from primary schools all over Sligo.

Guest judge and Hawk’s

Well

Theatre’s artist-in-residence Eithne Hand saw a stirring connection between the choice of poem and the effects of the events of the last 15 months.

Eithne said: “When the Hawk’s Well picked this poem, we had all had a year when sometimes there was nothing else to do except to look at nature and at cats, dogs and all sorts of animals up close. Lockdown meant that there was no school, very little fun, and friends were missed. So this poem about an unlikely connection between the moon in the sky and a small black cat was really very appropriate.” Praising the diversity of approaches to the subject, the writer said: “We had poems with great colours in them, velvet cushions, fire balloons, and craters to fall into – lots of imagination and fun!”

Choosing which piece would come out on top was no easy task for Eithne, who praised every entrant.

She said: “It was very hard to say there was only one winner, because all poems are successful just because you have actually written down what you are feeling or trying to say.”

The winning entry came from Tara

Flynn, from sixth class in St Patrick’s National School in Calry. Tara’s teacher is Alice McNassor.

Tara wins a €100 voucher for the Hawk’s Well for her school to put towards their next booking, plus a €45 family pass for Eagles Flying – the largest centre for birds of prey and owls in Ireland.

Two highly commended entries from Cian Quinn, a sixth class pupil from St Michael’s National School in Clonacool and Helena Griffiths Maher from fifth class in Scoil Naomh Molaise, also received a €45 family pass for Eagles Flying.