Thank you to this year’s poetry competition judge, Liam Carson.

Liam Carson’s memoir call mother a lonely field, won extensive critical praise on its publication in 2010, and was short-listed for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize in 2013. It is described by poet Martina Evans as ‘A unique poetic meditation on an Irish-speaking family which draws fine threads between language and history and the life-saving properties of a wide-ranging selection of narratives, including family lore, folk songs, comic books and the heroics of mythology which underpin the Irish language. Liam Carson pours an astonishingly concentrated draught of wisdom into one slim volume.’

His latest book is Belfast Twilight, a collection of haiku that explore landscape, nature, family life, and memory. Presented in haikai (or haiku sequences), it creates kaleidoscopic montages that evoke various worlds – from Belfast’s docklands at twilight to windswept islands off the west of Ireland.