Waterford City and County Council’s Arts Office has opened entries for the Waterford Poetry Prize 2026 — one of the most generous free-to-enter poetry competitions in Ireland, open to any writer currently living on the island, with a first prize of €600, a second prize of €400 and a third prize of €300. The deadline is Friday 14 August 2026 at 10am. The judge is one of the most significant poets working in Ireland today. If you write poetry, this is one you should enter.
The Prize and Its Origins
The Waterford Poetry Prize was established to honour the legacy of Seán Dunne, the Waterford poet, essayist and journalist who died in 1995 at the age of 39, leaving behind a body of work that far outstripped his years. Dunne was born in Waterford in 1956, educated at Mount Sion secondary school, and studied at University College Cork under the poet John Montague — one of the defining figures in 20th-century Irish poetry. He went on to become a literary editor and columnist at the Cork Examiner, a poet of quiet authority, a memoirist, and an editor of anthologies that helped define the landscape of Munster writing.
His collections — Against the Storm (1985), The Sheltered Nest (1992) and the posthumously completed Time and the Island — are marked by a fidelity to place, memory and the domestic texture of a life lived in the south of Ireland. His memoir, In My Father’s House (1991), was a bestseller and is one of the most affecting accounts of Waterford childhood in Irish literature. In a career cut devastatingly short, he contributed to more than 300 books and journals. The prize named in his memory has been running since 2017 and has become one of the anchoring events of Waterford’s literary calendar.
The Judge: Jessica Traynor
The Arts Office has returned to Jessica Traynor as adjudicator for 2026 — a choice that signals both the quality of the judging experience in 2025 and the confidence the organisers have in her critical judgement. Traynor is one of the most accomplished and widely recognised poets in Ireland today, with a body of work that has grown in ambition and scope with each collection.
Her debut, Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press, 2014), was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award and named one of the finest poetry debuts of its decade. Her second collection, The Quick (2019), was an Irish Times poetry book of the year. Her third, Pit Lullabies (Bloodaxe, 2022), received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, appeared on the Guardian‘s summer reading lists, and was again named an Irish Times Book of the Year. Her most recent collection, New Arcana, was published by Bloodaxe in 2025. She has received the Hennessy New Writer of the Year, the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary, the Listowel Poetry Prize, the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award (2023) and the Tundish Award from Field Day (2024).
Beyond her own writing, Traynor has held senior positions at the Abbey Theatre (as Literary Manager) and at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum (as Deputy Museum Director). She has written operatic libretti, been a UCD Creative Fellow and an Arts Council Writer in Residence at University of Galway, and serves as poetry editor for Banshee Press. In 2019 she co-edited Correspondences with actor Stephen Rea — an anthology pairing asylum seekers in direct provision with Irish writers, with all proceeds going to MASI. She is a formidably well-read and scrupulously fair judge, and the poets shortlisted under her adjudication in 2025 reflected a genuine breadth of register and form.
What the Competition Has Produced
The quality of work submitted to and recognised by the Waterford Poetry Prize has been consistently high. In 2025, the winning poem was West Cork Model Railway Village, Clonakilty by David McLoghlin from Ballincollig, Cork — a title that manages to be both completely specific and entirely mysterious, and that tells you something about what a strong competition poem can do with an unlikely subject. Second place in 2025 went to Anaphora by Jackie Gorman from Athlone — a formal choice in the title that signals ambition and craft. In 2024, the winning poem was The Transgender Mirror by Abhainn Connolly, an American writer living in Dublin, judged by Colm Keegan.
These titles — the unexpected specificity, the rhetorical gesture, the direct personal claim — suggest a competition that rewards originality and formal intelligence over safe lyricism. A useful thing to know before you start writing.
The Rules
The competition is free to enter with no age limit, open to all writers currently living on the island of Ireland. One entry per person. The poem must be original, unpublished and in English, with a maximum of 40 lines. Poems that have received awards in other competitions, or that are simultaneously submitted elsewhere, are not eligible. Previous first, second and third prize winners are not eligible to enter. Entries are submitted online in PDF or Word format; author details must appear on the submission form only and not on the poem itself — the judging is anonymous.
Entries are submitted at submit.link/4VE. The closing date is Friday 14 August 2026 at 10am. Under-18 entrants require parental consent.
The Prizes
The prize fund for 2026 has increased from previous years. First prize is €600. Second prize is €400. Third prize is €300. There is no entry fee. For a free-to-enter competition with an anonymous judging process and a judge of Jessica Traynor’s calibre, these are significant prizes — particularly for an emerging poet building a competition track record.
The Winners’ Announcement
The winners of the Waterford Poetry Prize 2026 will be announced at the closing event of the Waterford Writers Weekend on Sunday 25 October 2026. The Waterford Writers Weekend is one of the longest-running literary festivals in the south-east, taking place in late October and forming part of the broader Imagine Arts Festival. Having the prize announcement as the closing event of the weekend gives the winners’ poems a public reading in a live literary context — and gives the poets who attend the weekend something to look forward to at the end of it.
A Word on Seán Dunne
It is worth pausing on the man whose memory this prize honours. Seán Dunne died on 30 May 1995 — thirty-one years ago yesterday, as this is written. He was 39. In the years since, the reputation of his work has been maintained by those who knew and loved it, but he deserves a wider readership than he currently has. In My Father’s House is one of the most honest and luminous memoirs to emerge from Waterford — a book about childhood, loss and the particular quality of life in a city that has always known how to carry its history without being crushed by it.
His poems carry that same quality: rooted in the specific, open to the general, never decorative when direct will do. A poet who studied under John Montague and contributed to 300 books before the age of 40 had a great deal more to say. The prize that bears his name is the right kind of memorial — one that creates new work rather than simply commemorating the old.
How to Enter
Submit your poem at submit.link/4VE before 10am on Friday 14 August 2026. The competition is free to enter, open to all writers on the island of Ireland, with a maximum of 40 lines per poem. For updates follow Waterford City and County Council Arts Office and waterfordarts.com.
He contributed to more than three hundred books and journals — an extraordinary work rate for a writer so young.
On Seán Dunne (1956–1995), in whose memory the prize is given
