A Waterford poet has been crowned an overall category winner of the 2022 Trocáire Poetry Ireland Poetry Competition.
Lani O’Hanlon was the winner of the Adult Published category which had the theme ‘A Better Tomorrow’.
The winning poem was entitled ‘When I Visit Dalal’.
Lani O’Hanlon is a writer, poet and a somatic movement therapist. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. Her writing has been published in journals and anthologies across the world while she also has regularly featured on Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ.
Jane O’Hanlon from Poetry Ireland said, “I would like to express sincere thanks to everyone who supported the Trócaire Poetry Ireland Poetry Competition this year. The winning poems speak eloquently to urgent contemporary issues and yet manage to express hope in and for a ‘better tomorrow."
Joanne McGarry, Trócaire’s Campaigns and Volunteer Manager, said: “With entries from over 29 counties across the island of Ireland this year, and from as far afield as Canada, Australia, Nigeria and the U.S., we’d like to thank everyone who entered, the standard was superb. These wonderful poems highlight social justice and in turn increase awareness and understanding of the world we live in.”
Poetry Ireland and Trócaire look forward to celebrating the winners of the competition with an in-person event, the first to take place since before the Covid pandemic, on Culture Night, Friday 23 September, in the Seamus Heaney Lecture Theatre, located in the Cregan Library on DCU's St. Patrick's Campus.
