The 2023 Allingham Poetry and Flash Fiction Competitions are open for entries until 22 September. Competition rules and entry forms are detailed on the Festival website www.allinghamfestival.com. The Festival will take place on 8-12 November in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal.
This year’s Allingham Poetry and Flash Fiction Awards Ceremony will feature a new award – the Francis Harvey Award for Poetry. This annual award has been created to highlight the life and legacy of Donegal poet Francis Harvey, 1925-2014. The winner of the 2023 Allingham Poetry Competition will also be declared the winner of the Francis Harvey Award. The poetry competition will be judged by poet and publisher Kate Newman.
If you’re not familiar with Francis Harvey, look into his Collected Poems. In her introduction, Moya Cannon writes that ‘…Francis Harvey’s work combines the passion for precision of a naturalist and the yearning for grace of a poet, except for the fact that a passion for precision, for naming, is also part of the bedrock of poetry. In [his] poems there is a vivid sense of how we are all moving, “free but tethered, through time’s inexorable weathers.”’
As in past years, the winner of the Allingham Flash Fiction Competition will also be declared the winner of the Keane Family Award, honouring the memory of Ballyshannon writer and arts patron James Keane. The flash ficiton competiton will be judged by Alan McMonagle