Thank you to everybody who made contributions.

First prize to Noel Monahan for his poem

BOOCHLAWN BWEE

The wild bee tosses my fringe in the air Where I reside down a closed railway line Since government surveys mapped my decline, From that day forward pain was often near Living as I do in mist, fog and fear, Staggerweed, stammerwort, names from outside With their intended power to deride Can't rob me of pollen and nectar here. I love the risk, pleasure of the abyss I am the shomeer come out of darkness, Forsak'n, I close my daisy yellow eye On the grey incontinent Irish sky, Whisper my name whenever you need me Boochalawn, Boochalawn, Boochalawn Bwee. Second prize to Martin Dyar for his poem Turlough O'Carolan At Brabazon House

When she met him in Swinford, touching his famous hand, she could not have known the desire within his silence, could not have guessed her own influence, her care-free voice entering him, planting visions in his sleepless future. Nor, as she wheeled the harp to her father's banquet table, that their blind guest might conjure an imageless beauty, could she have imagined O'Carolan committing to memory, so minutely, the sea-whispers of her gown. Far from the simplicity of her youth was the musician's hunger, far his porter-wet beard, his bed of frozen grass crackling under a bodhrán moon. Far too his final night, that old fondness almost quenching the apparition: Her, the Brabazon waneen, approaching him across a field, like the field's intention; picking the tether of his mind from earth, standing over him, rousing with her laughter the voles in their nettle baskets, and prompting the near-dead harper to speak to the darkness. Third prize to John W. Sexton for his poem My Granda as Lama Tensing

Lama Tensing stops at the river and grasps his chest his disciples panic, fuss around him, but already his chest has opened sparrows are exiting from the wound twenty-five sparrows in all the disciples count each single one and every one of them made of smoke as they swoop down into the grass are absorbed by the earth Lama Tensing Twenty-Five Sparrows journeys through the bursting heart of the world comes out through a wound in the yard where my grandfather stands by the spigot Oh Granda, you grasped your chest and twenty-five sparrows flew out but no one saw them for they were made of smoke I'm only twelve, Granda, and too far away I cannot hold you as you fall I know only that the sparrows fly over the yard over the galvanized roof of the shed the feochadáns are ripening in the field their spoked seeds floating up each becomes the heart of a sparrow and all is healed The following poems were also short listed. two women, same sky by Eileen Sheehan

The Frenchwoman expressed her admiration for, what she termed, the Irish-English that I spoke. She heard music, a backward slant to syntax ,unlike any English she had heard before. I told her I was born to English and how our teacher's car was filled with wooden rosaries and plastic Virgins and how our palms grew welts as she bate into us what the vanquishers had long since beaten out. Irish conjugation felt alien to my tongue. Secretly I sided with the despots who had saved me from the Aimsir Láithreach and an Modh Coinníollach. But my mother sang Noreen Bán, mornings, over the porridge and dad would send us up the haggard to gather a gabháil of cipins for the fire. We spoke of how a stretch of life is spent unknowing; two women with all our ghosts parading in daylight hours under the same sky. Them Tears by Terry McDonagh

Them tears will get you nowhere these tears will get you nowhere tears will get you nowhere those tears will get you nowhere these tears will get you nowhere tears will get you nowhere them tears will get you nowhere these tears will get you nowhere tears will get you nowhere those tears will get you nowhere these tears will get you nowhere tears will get you nowhere them tears will get you nowhere these tears will get you nowhere tears will get you nowhere those tears will get you nowhere these tears will get you nowhere tears will get you nowhere them tears will get you nowhere these tears will get you nowhere tears will get you nowhere those tears will get you nowhere these tears will get you nowhere tears will get you nowhere said Fathers Finan and Cawley who knew the rules of the stick better than anyone even now I fall asleep at the wheel when I think of Latin grammar and maths I didn't know how to behave I tried to cheat and got caught for which I am grateful I jump off my motorbike climb onto a school wall and look to the other countries I might have emigrated to grammar had to be eradicated and I tried my best with the long ball into the forwards and tears at home them tearswillgetyounowherethesetearswillgetyounowhere tearswillgetyounowhere lovely rain adorns the morning I learn about the sacred from a stripe of sun I search for grammar among blackberries and find Fathers Finan and Cawley beating roses to death and frantically trying to find the key to destroy forts and fairies like babies you can't stop them eating filth them tears will get you nowhere these tears will get you nowhere tears will get you nowhere those tears will get you nowhere these tears will get you nowhere tears will get you nowhere in the end. Drinking Water by Cecilia McGovern

i Waiting on the dairy-shelf. So clear through it the mottled grain of a galvanised bucket. Allowed to take a shiny can down the well's stone-steps, too intent on my task to stare Narcissus-like, I rend the surface, see my image billow and undulate, weave the can to avoid floating embryos of caonach. ii Most deadly when it coursed fever and fear through my hometown. Typhoid. Child-deaths. Forgotten later when I press my lips to the outlet of a town-pump, crank the iron-arm as the townies did. Surprised, not a trickle. Withdraw my mouth. A live eel slaps concrete. I stare at his taut-muscled body, like me, out of his element, listen for the jeers, me and the eel in almost intimacy. iii Ten years ago, mabye still, a country lane in summer, in the hedge above a roadside-well a cup for the thirsty traveller who would dare drink. OUR LADY OF DUBLIN by Nuala Ní Chonchúir

I am the black Madonna - Our Lady of Dublin by another name - I have no swinging paidrín, even this crown is not my own; my downcast eyes and oak-dark robes bear no marks from my colourful past. To save my skin my paint was stripped: I was un-whited, de-blued, turned black, my back was torched, hollowed out with an awl, then filled with swill for the snuffling swine. I lolled for a time in a pawnbroker's window, watching all life unfurl along clattery Capel Street; I crossed the soupy Liffey then - left the Northside for the loftier South - in the arms of a priest. Now I stand, in relief, against alabaster marble, with a scatter of man-saints: Valentine, Albert, Jude; Jesus leaps in my arms and the golden crown they topped me with is shameless with jewels. I am the black Madonna - Our Lady of Dublin by another name - I have no swinging paidrín, even this crown is not my own; my downcast eyes and oak-dark robes bear no marks from my colourful past. Premonition by Ger Reidy

The doorbell before dawn, I wake from a dream - the Titanic docked in the kitchen, a glacier grew in the fireplace - there's nobody there. Two swans sleep in the purple sea, peace is lapping up on moonlit waves. Snow showers queue up over the bay, their great anvil shapes are the flukes of giant whales. At the junction, two identical signs point in opposite directions. The first breeze ruffles the birch. I read yesterday's sports page - United won 3-2 on aggregate. Suddenly there's the faint sound of my simple boat, still out of view. As I drink coffee the storm rises. Hailstones land in the fireplace. My silent currach nudges the door, waiting impatiently. The Separator by Noel Monahan

We stood around the dairy floor, eying All the gewgaws that were spread about, Flying saucers, cans, crockery and spout, Disk-fitting-into-disk, compressed in-between, Our mother bent over the green machine, Making it yowl and book and purr and sing The stray cat on the sill looking in As we waited patiently for the cream. At the start skimmed milk gushed and splashed, Then the cream poured, rolling from ring to ring Our pongers reaching out to intercept The flow of something longed for, something... It was singled out, separate, special cream, I drink it in like drinking from a dream.

Copyright © Terence Patrick Dolan 2002-2005