For Poetry Day Ireland 2018, HeadStuff.org launched a brand new poetry competition to celebrate this fantastic day of poetic activity around the country. This year the theme of the day was ‘Surprises’. For our competition we chose the theme ‘Surprise Encounters’

Our esteemed panel of judges for this year’s poetry competition were Colm Keegan and Erin Fornoff. Erin noted that they were ‘looking for surprising poems, and poems that arrest and compel and leave an emotional legacy. National Poetry Day is a great way to show that poetry is a fibre in everyone’s life, and speaks to truth that everyone shares.’

We at HeadStuff were humbled by the response to the competition with the sheer numbers of those who submitted their work. The judges were deeply impressed by the high quality of submissions. it was an incredibly difficult decision to pick three winners and thirteen commended poems. 

Over the next few days we will publish the three placed poems and thirteen commended ones. We would like to congratulate all the poets on their achievement. 

We would also like to thank everyone who took the time to submit to the competition. We received a high number of submissions of really high quality so please do keep watching the HeadStuff poetry section for more details on future submission information. Finally we would like to thank University College Cork, Poetry Ireland and Anam Cara Writer’s and Artist’s Retreat for their support. 

Read All Winning and Commended Poems Here 

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That Moment with the Milk

By Laura Morgan

Our first night.
Giggle s and bangs and feet and shrieks
From the landing, behind doors.
And us.
Over the old Belfast sink,
In our new house, new to us house,
Pouring new milk into the old carton.
Fridge is in cellophane;
Perishables lined on the outside sill.
Lucky for us the winter chill. 

But rough stones had pierced the plastic.
And so,
You washed an old,
As I held the dripping new,
And the hold steady, pour steady
The plume of milk,
Heavier, lighter; a second of balance;
Before lighter, heavier.
And we were fixed in this flow
New into old,
As the rooms were danced through
The fist and feet first explorations of toddlers. 

Our eye-beams linked across
The arc of white milk
And we kissed. 

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The first HeadStuff poetry competition was kindly judged anonymously by Colm Keegan and Erin Fornoff.

HeadStuff are extremely grateful to University College Cork, Poetry Ireland, and Anam Cara Writer’s and Artist’s Retreat for their generous support of the competition.

Photo by Edward Boulton on Unsplash