Donegal woman wins a national poetry award
The Michael Hartnett Poetry Award is awarded in alternate years to collections in Irish and English and carries a prize fund of €8,000.
A woman from Falcarragh has been named a joint winner of the Michael Hartnett Poetry Award.
Éigse Michael Hartnett is delighted to announce that the joint winners of this year’s Michael Hartnett Poetry Award are Donegal poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin for Hymn To All The Restless Girls (Gallery Press 2025) and Pat Boran for Hedge School (Dedalus 2024). Reacting to the award, Annemarie said she was delighted to have been selected as co-winner.
Originally from Cnoc na Naomh in Cloich Cheann Fhaola, she said “I was a teenager at the Poets’ House in Falcarragh when I first discovered Hartnett’s ‘Death of an Irish Woman’.
“The poem, inspired by the poet’s grandmother, Mrs Halpin, seemed to shimmer like a hologram. I instantly fell for Hartnett’s writing agus tá mé faoi gheasa aige ó Shin!”
The judges, Jo Slade and Gerard Smyth, described the work of Pat Boran as a “deceptively simple, clear and fresh collection which marks a remarkable milestone in the poet’s publishing career” and they praised Annemarie’s ”resolute sense of purpose, joyously ripping the veil of concealment and breaking the code of silence established by Church and State around their injustices against the generations of voiceless young women banished to a shadow-world… This work is a powerful invocation, at times spellbinding, its primal rhythms drawing the reader into a world both ancient and present.”
The Michael Hartnett Poetry Award is awarded on alternate years to collections in Irish and English and carries a prize fund of €8,000. It is funded by Limerick City and County Council and the Arts Council. Previous prize winners have included Cathal O’Searcaigh, Doireann Ní Ghríofa and Paddy Bushe.
Annemarie is now renovating Coláiste Phádraig in Loch Na nDeorán, Annagry, as a writing studio and community space.
She is also the author of Bloodroot (Doire Press, 2017), The Poison Glen (Gallery Press, 2021), Ghostgirl (Donegal County Archives, 2023) and a special limited edition book with artist Niamh McCann, Boy Dancer (Solstice Arts, 2025).
Working with award-winning composer/director Michael Gallen, Annemarie has recently co- authored the libretto for The Curing Line, a new opera which draws upon folkloric medicine and rural healing traditions. The opera is currently on a worldwide tour with upcoming dates at the Théâtre de la Ville (TDV-Sarah Bernhardt - Great Hall) in Paris on November 27 and 28.
Annemarie is currently an Irish Writer Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, until May 2027. She is also the Poet in Residence at the Yeats Society Sligo until 2028.
Hymn to All the Restless Girls is available to order at www.gallerypress.com.