The trustees of the Ireland Chair of Poetry are delighted to announce that Padriag Regan is the recipient of the 2020 Ireland Chair of Poetry bursary. The poet was nominated by Ireland Professor of Poetry Frank Ormsby and the nomination was unanimously confirmed by the trustees of the Board of the Ireland Chair of Poetry.
In his nomination of Padraig as the recipient of the award, Professor Ormsby praised ‘Regan’s originality and intellectual playfulness, seen in their distinctive brands of prose poem and ekphrastic poem.’
The Ireland Chair of Poetry bursary is awarded annually to a poet of promise and enables the recipient to reside for a period of four weeks at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, Co. Monaghan. Padraig is the first poet to be nominated by Profressor Ormsby to receive the award.
Speaking in response to the news Padraig said, ‘ I’m deeply grateful to Professor Frank Ormsby for selecting me to receive the Ireland Chair of Poetry bursary for 2020. From my friends and students, I know the impact the trust’s work can make on the lives of young writers, so thank you to everyone at the trust for the work they do to support poets in the island of Ireland. I look forward to visiting the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and seeing what writing happens there.’
Padraig Regan is the author of two poetry pamphlets: Delicious (Lifeboat, 2016) and Who Seemed Alive & Altogether Real (Emma Press, 2017). In 2015, they were a recipient of an Eric Gregory Award. They hold a PhD on creative-critical and hybridised writing practices in medieval texts and the work of Anne Carson from the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast. They are currently working towards their first full length collection.