Seren poet Robert Walton has been highly commended in the Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition 2022 for his poem ‘Den’. 

Judged by Adam Wyeth, the winners and commended poems were announced at the Desmond O'Grady Memorial Reading on Wednesday 13th  April. The organisers said that the standard of entries for this year’s prize was very high, with a wide range of poetic registers represented in the submitted work. 

For Robert, being highly commended in this year’s prize is especially poignant as he was fortunate enough to meet Desmond O’Grady several times. O’Grady’s encouragement of Robert’s work in many ways led to his first collection Workings, which won the Welsh Arts Council New Poet Award in 1978 , and a later chance encounter motivated the writing of poems which later appeared in Robert’s Seren collection Sax Burglar Blues. 

The winning poem in the competition was ‘Laundry’ by Kendrick Loo. A full list of winning and highly commended poems can be found on the Limerick Writers Centre website.