The trustees of the estate of Katherine Kavanagh have awarded the 2014 Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowships to three Irish poets, Gearoid Mac Lochlainn, Joseph Woods and Enda Wyley, with €8,000 going to Mac Lochlainn, and €6,000 each to Woods and Wyley.
Mac Lochlainn, a native of Belfast, has published four collections of poems, Babylon Gaeilgeoir (An Clochán, 1997), Na Scéalaithe (Coiscéim, 1999), and two bilingual volumes, Sruth Teangacha/Stream of Tongues (Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2002) and Criss-Cross / Mo Chara (Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2011) in which a series of beat-up anti-heroes and shapeshifters leap back and forth from spaghetti westerns to bardic poetry, from Mississipi Delta blues to sean-nós.
Woods, born in Co Louth in 1966, was first published in Japan. His collections are Sailing to Hokkaido (Worple Press, 2001); Bearings (Worple Press, 2005); Cargo (Dublin, Dedalus Press, 2010); and Ocean Letters (Dedalus Press, 2011). He works as an editor in Rangoon, Burma, where he lives with his wife and daughter. His poems are witty, thoughtful, clearsighted, sometimes exotic, sometimes close to home.
Wyley, born in Dublin in 1966, has published four collections of poetry: Eating Baby Jesus (1994), Socrates in the Garden (1998), Poems For Breakfast (2004) and To Wake to This (2009), all Dedalus. She was poet in residence in Melbourne University in 1996, having received the Vincent Buckley Memorial Award that year. Borrowed Space: New and Selected Poems is due from Dedalus in September. Her poems are remarkable for the way they communicate warm feeling through their lightness of touch and clarity of colour.
Kavanagh’s widow Katherine (born Katherine Barry Moloney), in her will left all rights in her husband’s works and all royalties from them to trustees who were directed to apply the income to help Irish poets, in their middle years, who are in need of assistance.
