The shortlist for The Shine/Strong Poetry Award 2014 is announced!!

Mountains to Sea dlr Book Festival is delighted to announce the official shortlist for the Shine/Strong Poetry Award 2014, awarded annually at the Mountains to Sea dlr Book Festival

The shortlist for the Shine/Strong Poetry Award 2014 is:

Tara Bergin This is Yarrow (Carcanet), Paula Cunningham Heimlich's Manoeuvre(Smith/Doorstop), Martin Dyar Maiden Names (Arlen House), Nicki Griffin Unbelonging (Salmon Poetry) and Jim Maguire Music Field (Poetry Salzburg).The Shine/Strong Award is presented annually to the author of the best first collection of poems published by an Irish poet in the previous year. The Shine/Strong Award is presented in memory of Rupert and Eithne Strong and is made possible by the generous support of Shine, the national organisation dedicated to upholding the rights and addressing the needs of all those affected by mental ill health. The Award will be presented at the Mountains to Sea dlr Book Festival on Sunday 14th September 2014. Our judge for this year's award is Mary Shine Thompson.

Tara Bergin was born and grew up in Dublin. She moved to England in 2002. In 2012 she completed her PhD research at Newcastle University on Ted Hughes’s translations of János Pilinszky. Her poetry was published in the bestselling Carcanet anthology New Poetries V and her debut collection This is Yarrow was published last year.

  

Paula Cunningham was born in Omagh and lives in Belfast where she works part-time as a dentist. Her chapbook A Dog called Chance was a winner in The Poetry Business Competition in 1999 and was published by Smith|Doorstop.   She has also written drama and short fiction, and has thrice held awards from the Arts Council of NI.  Her poems have been widely published and anthologised. Her first full poetry collection Heimlich's Manoeuvre was published by Smith|Doorstop in 2013. It was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh Best First Collection Prize 2013 and the 2014 Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection. Individual poems in the collection have also won awards.  Paula is currently working towards her next collection.

Martin Dyar won the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2009. Nominated by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature he was appointed a fellow of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 2013/14 and was the inaugural Ambassador for Irish Literature in Iowa City. Huckleberry Finn Day, a limited edition chapbook of his work, was published by the University of Iowa. He received his Ph.D. from Trinity College on the work of Wallace Stevens, Maiden Names was shortlisted by Carol Ann Duffy and John Boland for the inaugural Pigott Poetry Prixe in 2014. Martin is currently completing his debut novel.

Nicki Griffin grew up in Cheshire in the north west of England but has lived in East Clare since 1997. She completed an MA in Writing at NUI Galway in 2009. She won the 2010 Over the Edge New Poet of the Year prize and in 2012 was awarded a Literature Bursary by the Arts Council. She writes for Inland Waterways News and co-edits poetry magazine Skylight 47. Her first work of non-fiction, The Skipper and Her Mate, was published by New Island in 2013.Unbelonging, her debut poetry collection, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013.  Her second collection, due in 2016, will also be published by Salmon.

After graduating in Music and English from University College Dublin, Jim Maguire worked in journalism, writing mainly about the arts. He completed an M.Phil in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin in 1999. For many years he lived in Korea, the setting for his collection of short stories Quiet People (Lapwing, 2008). His poems have won several awards and prizes, including the Brendan Kennelly Award, the RTE/Rattlebag Poetry Slam, The Dromineer Poetry Prize and the Strokestown International Poetry Prize. He was the recipient of an Arts Council of Ireland Literature Bursary in 2010. His occasional work for radio includes a documentary on the letters of Leos Janacek for Lyric FM. His debut collection Music Field was published by Poetry Salzburg.

More information on Mountains to Sea dlr Book Festival is available on the festival website at http://www.mountainstosea.ie/ and #M2C2014