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Poetry Contest 2016 LONGLIST

POEM TITLE

POETS

Darwin’s Garden

 

Sense Memories: Ohio, Summer

 

For a Catfish (after Fukushima)

 

Ave Maria

Abigail Warren

Go well, stay well

Angus Walker

Other continents

benjamin weinberg

She Bee He Fly

bern butler

Lumbering

Bernadette Crawford

Novus Ordo Seclorum

Bjel Bakker

Poor Little Rich Girl

Bjel Bakker

Gold field

Brian Mostoller

Leaving You

Brian Wall

Hoping

Cáit R Doherty-Coogan

The Liturgy of Penitence

Carmine Giordano

The Looting

Cathy Guo

The Amaryllis

Charles Evans

For God’s Sake

Charles Evans

Jackdaws

Charlie Gracie

Unlikely Day

Charlotte Clutterbuck

GROWING PAINS

Chris Hardy

UP THE GARDEN PATH

Chris Hardy

OPEN HOUSE

Chris Hardy

Canta Tuerta/Twisted Song

Christopher Watson

Death of a Refugee

Ciaran O’Rourke

Nailing the Suicides to the Branches of the Family Tree

clodagh beresford dunne

THE OBSERVER

clodagh beresford dunne

Resonance

Colette Colfer

Today As I Wander

Colin Montfort

See below for details

D.G. Geis

Songbird

Dan Reid

Ena

Dan Reid

The Genesis of Isis

David Childs

Every medal that she won

Dawn Kozoboli

Sunday morning in Kigali

Deborah Livingstone

Remnants

Deirdre Daly

The Last Stand

Deirdre Dowling

I Glimpse a Ghost

Dermot O’Lynn

Cache

Dermot O’Lynn

What Our World Was Made Of

Devreaux Baker

North Bearing

Dougal Cousins

16 July 1969 AD

Eamonn Lynskey

ISN’T HE LUCKY?

Edith Anderson

Ground Truth

edward denniston

Today

elaine feeney

Blight

Elisabeth Rowe

The Woodpigeon and Me

eliza homan

Gypsum Mine, Skanesbukta

ELIZABETH BAGBY

Reckless

Elizabeth Buttimer

The Place Where No Trees Grow

Elizabeth Buttimer

Soft Moonlight From The Window

Elizabeth Buttimer

Despite His Good Ole Boy Ways, You Just Can’t Trust Him

Elizabeth Buttimer

The Price of a Biscuit

Elizabeth Buttimer

Unexpected Forecast

Elizabeth Buttimer

Life After Death

Elizabeth Cox

#girls on the brink

Elizabeth Gleeson

My Life as a Fountain Pen

Emily Vieweg

Amen

Eric Berlin

Gutter Ball

Eric Berlin

How to Avoid the Grave

Eugenie Theall

Mercurial Ocean

Fintan Clabby

Place of Stone

Frank Farrelly

BLVD

Gary Quinn

The sink

Gerry Dorrian

Flaking Paint on the Stanchion

Glen Wilson

Divining at Lissywollen

Grace Wilentz

Common Woes

Gráinne Tobin

The Art of Limning

H David

In Memory

Hannah Glickstein

Ordinary Pain

Hannah Glickstein

Rain

Hannah Glickstein

Lotus Sutra

Harry Newman

The Opposite of Rescue

Heather Duffy

Scarecrow

Hong Ray Tee

Talking shit

Ian Shine

Feast

Jacqueline P Haskell

Back Door

Jacquelyn Shreeves-Lee

Hy-Brasil

James O’Sullivan

Rust

James O’Sullivan

Mapping Hi-Zex Island

Janet Lees

Autobiography

Jay Kidd

Carapace

Jay Whittaker

Only Child

jeanne wilkinson

Recovery

Jed Myers

Intern’s Memory

Jed Myers

Blackout

Jed Myers

These Years You Climb

Jed Myers

The Temperature

Jed Myers

Passover

Jenny McRobert

A bell in the distance

jenny pollak

Vanishing Point

jenny pollak

The Library

Jess Bugg

Sat Nav Pilgrimage

Jim Green

Under the bus

Jim Lamey

The Checkout at Lidl

John D Kelly

Teenaga Kicks

John D Kelly

“Ballade to a Dublin Day”

John Pidgeon

A Short History of the Cold War

Jonathan Pinnock

Coiffer

jones irwin

Black Baby Money

Karen Ashe

You’d know it was Spring

Karina Tynan

The Fountain of Relative Age

Kathleen Balma

What Do Ghosts Need?

Kathleen Balma

For Oyster Shuckers

Kathleen Balma

Temporary Empathy

Kathleen Balma

Singularity

Kathleen Balma

Mass Rock at Gortaghig

Kathleen O’Toole

The Good News

Katie Bickham

silk

Katie Fitzpatrick

Goeld aand Blue

kellyn gooding

Nothing Matters

Kevin Conroy

Entangled Life at Murrisk Pier

Kevin Conroy

Plumes of Enceladus

Kristina Blaine

Somewhere Between Madness and Alienation

Krystyna Rawicz

More Sinner than Sinned Against

Krystyna Rawicz

Everything to Lose

Krystyna Rawicz

A collect of archways

Laila Farnes

Discovering light

Laila Farnes

See no evil

Laila Farnes

Hives

Laila Farnes

The Vortex

Laura Foley

The Dance of the Wind

Leigh Whiting

You Said I was your Moon

Leigh Whiting

Mowing the Lawn

Lisa St John

Inclement

Lorna Shaughnessy

A Question for Van the Man

Lynn Sadler

Going Beyond

Maggie Jackson

A Romance Revisited

Maggie Jackson

Plainsong

Maggie Jackson

Extracts from Advent Journey 2015 – an Interweaving

Maggie Jackson

Triptych

Maggie Jackson

WINTERIZE

Majella Kelly

FUNERAL

Majella Kelly

Her Takotsubo Heart

Mandy Beaumont

Land’s Wounding

Mara Adamitz Scrupe

Lacunae

Mara Adamitz Scrupe

The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight

Maria Ní Mhurchú

Minuet

Marian Fielding

Dirty Window

Mary Madec

Rain

Mary Upton

Silent Journey 2

Marylou DiPietro

Curfew

Matt Hohner

Dorothea in the Labyrinth

Michael Coy

The Soddy

Michael Fleming

Blood and Honey

Michael Poage

Memorabilia

michelle brock

Daily Bread

michelle brock

The Spy’s Wife

Monika McGreal Viola

Travels with my Father

Mran-Maree Laing

White Calla Lily (on red)

Nancy Lewis

Ten Minutes

Natalie Holborow

Felix Baumgartner’s Spacesuit

Natalie Scott

Neill Speers Moving On

Neill Speers

Ode to Maria

nollaig rowan

to FORSWEAR — (verb : renounce, disavow, reject, disown, abjure, give up)

nollaig rowan

a foreign country

Norm Neill

VE Day

Norm Neill

Cloud 9

Olivia Walwyn

Salvador Dali’s “Down the Rabbit Hole”

Orla Donoghue

Carer and seagrass

Orlagh O’Farrell

Cloud Cuckoo Land

Pamela OBrien

Gilgamesh was written by Humans.

Patrick Butler

Flash in the Distance

Patrick Dixon

3030s

Paul Bregazzi

Lesson

Paul Bregazzi

THE ALBATROSS AT LANGDON SCHOOL

Paul Nash

THE NIGHT TRAIN STEWARD

Paul Nash

LA HAUTE BORNE

Paul Nash

Coor Li

Peter Branson

Amazon

Rachel Fenton

Thought Experiment

Radhika Chadha

salt free, gluten free

Richard Thompson

ZOMBIES

Robert Campbell

Broken Lines

Robert Rooney

Cormorant

Robert Rooney

The Book House Hotel, Bursa

Robyn Rowland

Ode to Love

Roisin Kelly

HOW TO SET YOURSELF ON FIRE

Ron Carey

Sandcastles

Rosalin Blue

Biology Drive

Rosalin Blue

Abuse

Rosita Sweetman

Warren Mathews

Ross Donlon

Moving

S A McCormick

It came from everywhere

Saakshi Joshi

The Secret Religion

Samuel Selinger

Can I just speak to you for a second?

Sarah Byrne

Letter from St. Judes, April 1956

Sarah Byrne

Sandhill Road, Ballybunion, 1979

Sarah Kelly

Reni’s Cenci in the sitting room

Sarah Kelly

She Sees Him

Shirley Bunyan

Bitch O Bytes

Shirley Bunyan

Father, Diving

Shubha Venugopal

mother ireland’s lament for her son 2016

Sighle Meehan

The Dyslexic

Soon Eu Leon

Davy Jones Lockup

Steve Startup

Amphibious Landings

Stuart Lee

HOLY GRAIL

Susanna Clayson

‘MAM’

Susanna Clayson

The Ridding

Tess Barry

Camerata

Theophilus Kwek

Eaters of the Apple

Tom Moore

March Madness

trish kelly

Word by Word

Trish McGrath

Key

Trudie Murrell

Talking At Dawn To Myself In Riga

Wende McCabe

The Last Call

Wiebo Grobler

Gorgon

Zoila Bergeron

Fish Books

Fish Anthology 2024

Fish Anthology 2024

Vivid, astute, gripping, evocative. These stories utterly transported me. – Sarah Hall (Short Story)

In the landscape of emotion and folly, Flash writers are a fearless lot – these stories prove it. – Michelle Elvy (Flash Fiction)

… combining the personal and particular with the universal, each touching in surprising ways … experiences that burn deep, that need to be told. – Sean Lusk (Memoir)

Strong poems. First place is a poem I wish I’d written! – Billy Collins (Poetry)


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Fish Anthology 2023

Fish Anthology 2023

… a showcase of disquiet, tension, subversion and surprise …
so many skilled pieces … gem-like, compressed and glinting, little worlds in entirety that refracted life and ideas … What a joy!
– Sarah Hall

… memoirs pinpointing precise
feelings of loss and longing and desire.
– Sean Lusk

What a pleasure to watch these poets’ minds at work, guiding us this way and that.
– Billy Collins


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Fish Anthology 2022

‘… delightful, lively send-up … A vivid imagination is at play here, and a fine frenzy is the result.’ – Billy Collins
‘… laying frames of scenic detail to compose a lyric collage … enticing … resonates compellingly. … explosive off-screen drama arises through subtly-selected detail. Sharp, clever, economical, tongue-in-cheek.’ – Tracey Slaughter


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Fish Anthology 2021

Fish Anthology 2021

Brave stories of danger and heart and sincerity.
Some risk everything outright, some are desperately quiet, but their intensity lies in what is unsaid and off the page.
These are brilliant pieces from bright, new voices.
A thrill to read.
~ Emily Ruskovich


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Fish Anthology 2020

Fish Anthology 2020

I could see great stretches of imagination. I saw experimentation. I saw novelty with voice and style. I saw sentences that embraced both meaning and music. ~ Colum McCann


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Fish Anthology 2019

These glorious pieces have spun across the globe – pit-stopping in Japan, the Aussie outback, Vancouver, Paris, Amsterdam and our own Hibernian shores – traversing times past, present and imagined future as deftly as they mine the secret tunnels of the human heart. Enjoy the cavalcade. – Mia Gallagher


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Fish Anthology 2019

Fish Anthology 2018

The standard is high, in terms of the emotional impact these writers managed to wring from just a few pages. – Billy O’Callaghan

Loop-de-loopy, fizz, and dazzle … unique and compelling—compressed, expansive, and surprising. – Sherrie Flick

Every page oozes with a sense of place and time. – Marti Leimbach

Energetic, dense with detail … engages us in the act of seeing, reminds us that attention is itself a form of praise. – Ellen Bass


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Fish Anthology 2017

Fish Anthology 2017

Dead Souls has the magic surplus of meaning that characterises fine examples of the form – Neel Mukherjee
I was looking for terrific writing of course – something Fish attracts in spades, and I was richly rewarded right across the spectrum – Vanessa Gebbie
Really excellent – skilfully woven – Chris Stewart
Remarkable – Jo Shapcott


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Fish Anthology 2016

The practitioners of the art of brevity and super-brevity whose work is in this book have mastered the skills and distilled and double-distilled their work like the finest whiskey.


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Sunrise Sunset by Tina Pisco

Sunrise Sunset

€12  (incl. p&p)   Sunrise Sunset by Tina Pisco Read Irish Times review by Claire Looby Surreal, sad, zany, funny, Tina Pisco’s stories are drawn from gritty experience as much as the swirling clouds of the imagination.  An astute, empathetic, sometimes savage observer, she brings her characters to life. They dance themselves onto the pages, […]


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Fish Anthology 2015

Fish Anthology 2015

How do we transform personal experience of pain into literature? How do we create and then chisel away at those images of others, of loss, of suffering, of unspeakable helplessness so that they become works of art that aim for a shared humanity? The pieces selected here seem to prompt all these questions and the best of them offer some great answers.
– Carmen Bugan.


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Fish Anthology 2014

Fish Anthology 2014

What a high standard all round – of craft, imagination and originality: and what a wide range of feeling and vision.
Ruth Padel

I was struck by how funny many of the stories are, several of them joyously so – they are madcap and eccentric and great fun. Others – despite restrained and elegant prose – managed to be devastating. All of them are the work of writers with talent.
Claire Kilroy


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Fish Anthology 2013

Fish Anthology 2013

The writing comes first, the bottom line comes last. And sandwiched between is an eye for the innovative, the inventive and the extraordinary.


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Fish Anthology 2012

A new collection from around the globe: innovative, exciting, invigorating work from the writers and poets who will be making waves for some time to come. David Mitchell, Michael Collins, David Shields and Billy Collins selected the stories, flash fiction, memoirs and poems in this anthology.


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Fish Anthology 2011

Reading the one page stories I was a little dazzled, and disappointed that I couldn’t give the prize to everybody. It’s such a tight format, every word must count, every punctuation mark. ‘The Long Wet Grass’ is a masterly bit of story telling … I still can’t get it out of my mind.
– Chris Stewart


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Fish Anthology 2010

The perfectly achieved story transcends the limitations of space with profundity and insight. What I look for in fiction, of whatever length, is authenticity and intensity of feeling. I demand to be moved, to be transported, to be introduced into other lives. The stories I have selected for this anthology have managed this. – Ronan Bennett, Short Story Judge.


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Fish Anthology 2009 – Ten Pint Ted

I sing those who are published here – they have done a very fine job. It is difficult to create from dust, which is what writers do. It is an honour to have read your work. – Colum McCann


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Fish Anthology 2008 – Harlem River Blues

The entries into this year’s Fish Short Story Prize were universally strong. From these the judges have selected winners, we believe, of exceptional virtue. – Carlo Gebler


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Fish Anthology 2007

I was amazed and delighted at the range and quality of these stories. Every one of them was interesting, well-written, beautifully crafted and, as a short-story must, every one of them focused my attention on that very curtailed tableau which a short-story necessarily sets before us. – Michael Collins


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Fish Anthology 2006 – Grandmother, Girl, Wolf and Other Stories

These stories voice all that is vibrant about the form. – Gerard Donovan. Very short stories pack a poetic punch. Each of these holds its own surprise, or two. Dive into these seemingly small worlds. You’ll come up anew. – Angela Jane Fountas


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All the King’s Horses – Anthology of Historical Short Stories

Each of the pieces here has been chosen for its excellence. They are a delightfully varied assortment. More than usual for an anthology, this is a compendium of all the different ways that fiction can succeed. I invite you to turn to ‘All the King’s Horses’. The past is here. Begin.
– Michel Faber


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Fish Anthology 2005 – The Mountains of Mars and Other Stories

Literary anthologies, especially of new work, act as a kind of indicator to a society’s concerns. This Short Story collection, such a sharp and useful enterprise, goes beyond that. Its internationality demonstrates how our concerns are held in common across the globe. – Frank Delaney


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Fish Anthology 2004 – Spoonface and Other Stories

From the daily routine of a career in ‘Spoonface’, to the powerful, recurring image of a freezer in ‘Shadow Lives’. It was the remarkable focus on the ordinary that made these Fish short stories such a pleasure to read. – Hugo Hamilton


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Feathers & Cigarettes

In a world where twenty screens of bullshit seem to be revolving without respite … there is nothing that can surpass the ‘explosion of art’ and its obstinate insistence on making sense of things. These dedicated scribes, as though some secret society, heroically, humbly, are espousing a noble cause.
– Pat McCabe


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Franklin’s Grace

It’s supposed to be a short form, the good story, but it has about it a largeness I love. There is something to admire in all these tales, these strange, insistent invention. They take place in a rich and satisfying mixture of places, countries of the mind and heart. – Christopher Hope


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Asylum 1928

There are fine stories in this new anthology, some small and intimate, some reaching out through the personal for a wider, more universal perspective, wishing to tell a story – grand, simple, complex or everyday, wishing to engage you the reader. – Kate O’Riodan


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Five O’Clock Shadow

I feel like issuing a health warning with this Fish Anthology ­ these stories may seriously damage your outlook – Here the writers view the world in their unique way, and have the imagination, talent, and the courage to refine it into that most surprising of all art forms ­ the short story. – Clem Cairns.


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From the Bering Strait

Every story in this book makes its own original way in the world. knowing which are the telling moments, and showing them to us. And as the narrator of the winning story casually remarks, ‘Sometimes its the small things that amaze me’ – Molly McCloskey


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Scrap Magic

The stories here possess the difference, the quirkiness and the spark. They follow their own road and their own ideas their own way. It is a valuable quality which makes this collection a varied one. Read it, I hope you say to yourself like I did on many occasions, ‘That’s deadly. How did they think of that?’ – Eamonn Sweeney


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Dog Day

Really good short stories like these, don’t read like they were written. They read like they simply grew on the page. – Joseph O’Connor


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The Stranger

The writers in this collection can write short stories . . . their quality is the only thing they have in common. – Roddy Doyle


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The Fish Garden

This is the first volume of short stories from Ireland’s newest publishing house. We are proud that fish has enabled 15 budding new writers be published in this anthology, and I look forward to seeing many of them in print again.


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12 Miles Out – a novel by Nick Wright

12 Miles Out was selected by David Mitchell as the winner of the Fish Unpublished Novel Award.
A love story, thriller and historical novel; funny and sad, uplifting and enlightening.


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Altergeist – a novel by Tim Booth

You only know who you can’t trust. You can’t trust the law, because there’s none in New Ireland. You can’t trust the Church, because they think they’re the law. And you can’t trust the State, because they think they’re the Church And most of all, you can’t trust your friends, because you can’t remember who they were anymore.


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Small City Blues numbers 1 to 51 – a novel by Martin Kelleher

A memoir of urban life, chronicled through its central character, Mackey. From momentary reflections to stories about his break with childhood and adolescence, the early introduction to the Big World, the discovery of romance and then love, the powerlessness of ordinary people, the weaknesses that end in disappointment and the strengths that help them seek redemption and belonging.


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The Woman Who Swallowed the Book of Kells – Collection of Short Stories by Ian Wild

Ian Wild’s stories mix Monty Python with Hammer Horror, and the Beatles with Shakespeare, but his anarchic style and sense of humour remain very much his own in this collection of tall tales from another planet. Where else would you find vengeful organs, the inside story of Eleanor Rigby, mobile moustaches, and Vikings looting a Cork City branch of Abracababra?


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News & Articles

Fish Anthology 2024

Fish Anthology 2024 LAUNCH

11th June 2024
Monday 15th July at 6:30 Marino (Old Methodist) Church Bantry, West Cork, Ireland The Launch of the Fish Anthology 2024 was held in this charming old methodist church. Many of the authors published in the Anthology read from their work, to showcase sample of  the talent in this book.  We had a get together of […]

Poetry Prize 2024: Results

15th May 2024
  Winners Short-list Long-list     Here are the winners of the Fish Poetry Prize 2024, selected by Billy Collins, to be published in the Fish Anthology 2024. Below you will find short biographies of the winners and the Long and Short Lists. From all of us at Fish we congratulate the poets whose poems […]

Short Story Prize 2023/24: RESULTS

10th April 2024
Winners Short-list Long-list   On behalf of all of us at Fish, congratulations to all of you who made the long and the short-lists.  Apologies for the delay in this announcement. The 10 winners will be published in the Fish Anthology 2024. The launch will be during the West Cork Literary Festival, Bantry, Ireland – […]

Flash Fiction Prize 2024: RESULTS

10th April 2024
Winners Short-list Long-list   From all of us at Fish, thank you for entering your flashes. Congratulations to the writers who  were short or long-listed, and in particular to the 11 winners whose flash stories will be published in the Fish Anthology 2024. The launch will be during the West Cork Literary Festival, Bantry, Ireland […]

Short Memoir Prize 2024: RESULTS

1st April 2024
Winners Short-list Long-list   On behalf of all of us at Fish, we congratulate the 10 winners who’s memoir made it into the Fish Anthology 2024 (due to be launched in July ’24 at the West Cork Literary Festival), and to those writers who made the long and short-lists, well done too.  Thank you to Sean […]

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