Waterford Winner of Eavan Boland Mentoring Award
The current Waterford Poetry Prize winner, Molly Twomey from Lismore, Co. Waterford has been announced as the poet selected to be mentored by Dorianne Laux as the Eavan Boland Award winner, established by Jacar Press to honour one of Ireland’s greatest poets.
Molly Twomey said in her application “I am a huge fan of Boland’s work and wrote an essay about her first collection, In Her Own Image, for my BA in English literature. Subsequently, I studied her poetry for my MA in Creative Writing in University College Cork where I received the title of college scholar. She empowered me to write about my own experience and that of the women around me, often through the guise of mythology.”
Molly Twomey holds an MA in Creative Writing from UCC and has been published in journals such as Poetry Ireland, Crannóg, The Stinging Fly, Banshee, and The Irish Times. She won the Padraic Colum Poetry Prize in 2019, the Waterford Poetry Prize in 2020, and has been selected for Words Ireland’s National Mentoring Programme 2020. In 2020, Molly was one of two poets from Cork, Ireland who participated in the annual international poetry exchange between Cork and Coventry (UK).
Dorianne Laux is one of the U.S.’ most beloved poets. Her sixth collection, Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems was named a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her fifth collection,The Book of Men, was awarded The Paterson Prize. Her fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon, won The Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also the author of Awake; What We Carry, a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award; Smoke; as well as a fine small press edition, The Book of Women. She is the co-author of the celebrated text The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry.
The Arts Office congratulate Molly on this wonderful achievement and wish her continued writing success.
