Manuela Moser announced as winner of the Ireland Chair of Poetry 2020 Travel Award

The Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust are delighted to announce that Manuela Moser will be the fourth recipient of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Travel Award.

Commenting on this year’s Travel Award the adjudication panel, comprised of the Trustees together with the current Ireland Chair of Poetry, Professor Frank Ormsby, had this to say:

“We are delighted to award the Travel Award to Manuela Moser who recently received her PhD in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Queen’s University. The award will enable her to travel by boat and train to Berlin and retrace the journey that her Jewish grandfather and his brother and their parents made in 1936 to escape Nazi Germany. She wants to stay in Berlin and explore the city through their eyes and write a series of poems about the experience. We were impressed and moved by her application, and look forward to the poems she is going to write. Generally, we noted the richness and variety of the applications, and the importance of personal and family history in shaping the projects. Thirteen writers applied for the Travel Award which is worth £2000.”

Manuela’s work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review, Copper Nickel and The Tangerine, and elsewhere. She runs the reading series and poetry press The Lifeboat, and a pamphlet is forthcoming from Bad Betty Press.