Internationally acclaimed writer wins Waterford Poetry Prize 

The winner of the prestigious Waterford Poetry Prize was announced at the end of Waterford Writers’ Weekend last weekend.

First place is awarded to David McLoghlin, Ballincollig, Cork. The winning poem is titled ‘West Cork Model Railway Village, Clonakilty’.

The first place prize is €500 and a place on the Molly Keane Writer’s retreat.

He is the prize-winning author of three collections of poetry with Salmon Poetry, most recently Crash Centre, shortlisted for the 2025 Pigott Prize.

His writing has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, Literary Hub, Poetry Foundation, broadcast on RTÉ’s Poetry People, WNYC’s Radiolab, and many other journals in the USA and Ireland.

His writing has been translated into Spanish, Bulgarian and German. 

He has received recognition and support in the form of prizes, grants and fellowships from The Arts Council, The Sewanee Writers’ Conference, The Patrick Kavanagh Awards, The Katherine and Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship, and a teaching fellowship from New York University.

He also writes personal essays and memoir and has work forthcoming in University of Michigan Press’s 'Under Discussion' series. He teaches Creative Writing (poetry and memoir) widely in Ireland and in the USA (via Zoom).

Second place goes to ‘Anaphora’ by Jackie Gorman a poet from Athlone.

 Her work has been widely published in journals such as Poetry Ireland Review, The Honest Ulsterman, The Lonely Crowd and others.

 Her debut collection was published in 2019 by the Onslaught Press, UK.

 She has a Masters in Poetry Studies from DCU and was the recipient in 2024 of the John Broderick Emerging Writers Bursary.

 She has previously received the Listowel Writers' Week Single Poem Award and was part of the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. She has completed residences at Cill Rialag and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and has received two Agility Awards from the Arts Council.

Third prize goes to Róisín Leggett Bohan from Cork.

 She has won the Patrick Kavanagh Award 2025 and was runner up last year. 

She has been shortlisted for The Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize and Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. 

Her work features in Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, The Manchester Review, Banshee, Magma, Aesthetica, The Pomegranate London and RTÉ Radio 1. Several of her poems are published in Beginnings Over and Over: Four New Poets from Ireland (Dedalus Press, 2025). 

She holds an MA in Creative Writing from UCC and is the co-founder of HOWL New Irish Writing. Her poem which is placed third in the Waterford Poetry Prize is called ‘If I were from Mandalore, lifted by a gargantuan raptor’.

Margaret Organ, Arts Officer and Curator of the Waterford Writers Weekend thanked everyone from around the country for sending in their poems and said that this years’ adjudicator Jessica Traynor had difficult decisions to make.

Click here to watch judge Jessica Traynor read the winning poem and the reasons for her choice.