We welcome Vivienne Vermes author of the winning poem Mrs Pan, Ian O’Brien whose poem Sunlight, Eston Street was placed second and Doireann Ni Ghriofa who wrote Mother Moth, the third placed poem in the Paragram Poetry Prize 2013.

Congratulations to all three for their brilliant poems which rose above the rest to claim the top three prizes in the competition…and as Adrienne Dines, our judge said many times, it was not an easy journey.

The poems and the adjudication comments follow in reverse order beginning with, in third place, Mother Moth:

Light leaks from the crack under his door.
I hold my breath and tiptoe over the threshold.
Under the day’s debris, my feet search for floor
between piles of plastic dinosaurs, crumpled clothes, tilting towers of Lego.
Tonight, his light shines from elsewhere—there— the tented sheet.
Underneath, a torch glows. He is awake, sounding out new syllables,