Jeremy Loynes has short-listed five entries for the 2025 Brian Dempsey Prize. The winning entry will be made up of consistently strong poems, appropriately brought together so that ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ (to quote Aristotle).
Jeremy will select the final winner of the Brian Dempsey Memorial pamphlet competition from his short-list and we’ll announce the result on March 28th.
If your entry of 10 or more poems is not among the titles listed below, don’t lose heart. We’re now going through all the poems sent in, both as single poems to the VOLE Spring Anthology competition, and as parts of pamphlet entries, and selecting a long-list from among them. 50 of these will be published in the VOLE Spring Anthology. Jeremy will select the prize-winners from among them in April.
Here’s the shortlist of the pamphlet entries, in no particular order:
An old road through a new town
The unbuilding
A long way down
Love of a city
Behind prim suburban walls
The final result of the pamphlet contest will be announced here and on our website on Friday 28th March 2025.