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2026 Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition open for entries

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The prize winner of this year’s Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition will be announced during April 2026

Limerick Writers’ Centre has announced details for the 2026 Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition

Limerick Writers’ Centre has announced details for the 2026 Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition, with the closing date for entries set for midnight Saturday, March 7, 2026.

The Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition was inaugurated in 2012 by the late Barney Sheehan, poetry impresario of the White House Poetry Revival, in honour of the late Limerick poet Desmond O’Grady, who died in 2014.

The Limerick Writers’ Centre now runs the competition as part of April is Poetry Month in Limerick festival. The prize winner of this year’s competition will be announced during April 2026 and will be invited to give a reading of his/her work during the 2027 festival.


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The judge for this year’s competition has been announced as poet Seán Lysaght.

Seán Lysaght is the author of several volumes of poems, including Scarecrow (1998), The Mouth of a River (2007) and Carnival Masks (2014) from Gallery Press, and a biography of the naturalist Robert Lloyd Praeger (Four Courts Press, 1998). He has also written prose about wildlife and landscape: Eagle Country (2018), Wild Nephin (2020) and Unveiling the Sun (2025). His latest collection, New Leaf, was published by Gallery in 2022. He lives in Westport, County Mayo. Sean grew up in Limerick, in Thomondgate, just by the River Shannon and has written a sequence of poems entitled , ‘Limerick’, in is collection ERRIS (Gallery, 2002). He is a former winner of The O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry.

Desmond O’Grady (1935 – 2014) was born in Limerick, Ireland. Poet, professor, Harvard teaching fellow, editor, translator, Aosdana member. Widely travelled, O’Grady left his Limerick home in the 1950’s to teach in Paris, Rome and America. Reputed not only for his seventeen collections of poetry and his linguistic prowess, O’Grady was a founding member of the European Community of Writers.

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