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Poetry Prize ’22, Results

 

Winners

Short-list

Long-list

 


 

Winners

Here are the 10 winners, as chosen by judge Billy Collins, to be published in the Fish Anthology 2022

The Anthology will  be launched as part of the West Cork Literary Festival, (The Maritime Hotel, Bantry, West Cork – Monday 11th July – 18.00.) All welcome!

The 10 winning poems will be published in the FISH ANTHOLOGY 2022
1st prize: €1,000
2nd: a week in residence at Anam Cara Writer’s and Artist’s Retreat
3rd: €200

Billy Collins

Billy Collins

 

Comments on the winning poems are from Billy Collins (below), who we sincerely thank for lending his time and experience to judge the prize.

Congratulations to the ten winning poets, and also to those whose poems made the short-list of 65, and the long-list of 247. Total entry was 2,170. 

 

More about the 10 winning poets (link)

The Ten Winners:

 

FIRST                                                                                                 

The Life Galleries, Kelvingrove 
by Susan Shepherd (SCOTLAND)

‘Short, but not as simple as it might appear, “The Life Galleries, Kelvingrove” is a poem in five balanced couplets that captures a moment where two experiences, occurring simultaneously, are folded together.  The situation is spelled out in the first line: “I’m face to face with a wildebeest and my daughter is on the phone.”  The title lets us know it’s a stuffed wildebeest in a gallery, but the daughter’s “hatred of men starting with her father” is quite real.  The poem toggles back and forth between the daughter’s loud torrent and the mother’s fixation with the beast, who began in Kenya and now appears shocked to find himself in Glasgow.  The phone call ends and so does the mother’s moment with the animal.  Nothing to do but leave the gallery to the larger scene of stressed families and gaudy rink lights.  And, then, to write this modest poem, which, like the wildebeest, is a means of steadying the self.’ – Billy Collins

 

SECOND

Love’s Latitudes
by Judy Crowe (California, USA)

‘Love’s Latitudes is a delightful, lively send-up of instructions from what turns out to be a very unreliable teacher of oil painting.  The four uneven stanzas, with long chatty lines, contain an imbalanced mix of the practical (“Lay out your fine brushes”) and the absurd (“Always paint the sides of the canvas” and getting the right color for “thimbleberries”). The level of playfulness rises with the discovery that the pitiable student will be painting over another painting and the final work will somehow be suggestive of love.  The reader cannot help enjoy being manipulated by the escalation of silliness climaxing in a most mysterious ending where the flowers called coral bells (titanium white) will actually begin to ring.  Only in poetry’. – Billy Collins

 

 

THIRD

Retreat
by Katie Griffiths (Surrey, England)

‘Retreat begins as a parody of one of those yoga/mindfulness getaways, which ordinarily would be an easy target were it not for the speaker’s interestingly jangled language and her remembrance of another retreat involving ascetic deprivations and self-flagellation. Or was that in a past life? she wonders.  In neatly enjambed tercets, the poem becomes stranger as it finds its way.  A favorite sentence is “Thank heavens this was August/ and not the springmelt or we’d have been a limblash/ down to Orgiva.” We’re somewhere in Spain, but we’re really in the hands of an eccentric guide for whom the stars “jigged and hornswaggled.”  But after her distorted journey, she is returned by poem’s end to almost normal.  Eliminating as her identity both Nefertiti and her military uncle, she becomes herself again: a “mother frazzled to the quick.”  A vivid imagination is at play here, and a fine frenzy is the result’. – Billy Collins

HONORARY MENTIONS (in no particular order):

 

Blue Jeans

by Doreena Jennings (Carlow, Ireland)

 

 

Gourds  

by Caroline Freeman (Mississippi, USA)

 

 

Invisible Sisterhood

by Julia Forster (Machynlleth, Wales)

 

 

Stickball Cemetery

by Joshua Sauvageau (Chicago, USA)

 

 

Tell me I’m Pretty

by Nicole Adabunu (Iowa, USA)

 

 

Perfect Dad

by Jonathan Greenhause (New Jersey, USA)

 

 

For Leonard

by Cynthia Snow (Massachusetts, USA)

 

 

 

A LITTLE ABOUT THE WINNERS

Susan Shepherd is a journalist from the Scottish border town of Coldstream, where she likes to neglect housework and watch otters in the Tweed. Her first pamphlet, Wood End (2019) was published by Shoestring Press and she won the Poets & Players “Re-emergence” prize in Dec 2020. She was reunited with her late birth mother in County Cork in 1998 at the age of 37 and rejoices in her Irish roots.

 

Judy Brackett Crowe lives in the foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada. She believes that the right words in the right places—in chalk or air or song or memory—are worth a thousand pictures. She believes in lilacs, Latin, children, raspberries, summer evenings, the red-shouldered hawk and the sandhill crane, the cottonwood and the Douglas Fir.. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies and in her chapbook Flat Water: Nebraska Poems. www.judybrackett.com

 

Katie Griffiths grew up in Ottawa, Canada (those winters!) in a family from Northern Ireland.  Author of the pamphlet My Shrink is Pregnant (Live Canon 2019) and the collection The Attitudes (Nine Arches Press 2021) she came second in 2018’s National Poetry Competition.  Katie is a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, Red Door Poets and also singer-songwriter in A Woman in Goggles – a band which, to date, has neither swum nor skied.

 

Doreena Jennings, member of the award winning Carlow Writer’s Co-op, travelled in 2016 to Chicago and in 2018 to Sweden, Wales and  around Ireland to perform her work. She has been published in the Blue Nib, in several anthologies and and is one of the international poets on the PoetryXhunger website. Recently one of her poems featured on KCLR radio. In April 2022 she was the featured poet in Saturday Independent New Irish Writing.

 

Caroline R. Freeman is a poet born and raised in Mississippi. After receiving her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland, she has enjoyed teaching writing classes at colleges and universities in Maryland, Tennessee, Texas and Mississippi. She and her husband, Will, are raising a beautiful baby girl, Erin, and a spirited four-year-old, Henry, in Hattiesburg where she aggressively gardens and fancies herself the family historian. 

 

Julia Forster is a novelist and author of non-fiction. She is the Co-Director of The Literary Consultancy’s Being A Writer and she also works as a freelance publicist for independent presses and literary festivals. Having recently completed a Diploma in Spiritual Development, she is training to become a coach, specialising in working with authors and poets. In summer 2023, she’s launching a writers’ retreat outside Machynlleth, mid-Wales, from a north American-style cabin that her husband has been building by hand from larch felled from a woodland opposite the garden. 

 

Joshua Sauvageau was born and reared on the unremarkable plains of rural North Dakota. He joined the US Navy at 20. For six years, he operated a nuclear reactor operator on an aircraft carrier, where, in his downtime, he scribbled poetry in the bilge and against bulkheads. At present, he is a 42-year-old classical music recording engineer in Chicago. He once visited the Corn Palace of Mitchell, South Dakota. 

 

Nicole Adabunu is a young writer interested in the kind of work that devastates. Currently, she is a first year MFA Poetry Candidate and Iowa Arts Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the recipient of a 2021 Academy of American Poets University Prize, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming from Poets.org, Writer’s Digest, and The Greensboro Review. She is an avid hater of dog Instagram accounts written in first person.

 

Jonathan Greenhause’s first poetry collection, Cupping Our Palms, won the 2022 Birdy Poetry Prize and will be published by Meadowlark Books in the Fall, and his poems have appeared in Banshee, The Moth, Poetry Ireland Review, Southword Journal, and on The Poetry Society website.  Jonathan lives in the Statue of Liberty and has been voted “World’s #1 Dad” for 9 consecutive years but graciously declines to accept the prize money, preferring to toil in anonymity.

 

Cynthia Snow’s writing has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, Peace Review, Plant-Human Quarterly, and elsewhere.  Slate Roof Press published Cindy’s chapbook, Small Ceremonies.  Her fascination with the 17th Century botanical artist and naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian led to a manuscript of poems.  Cindy lives in Shelburne Falls and works at Greenfield Community College.  In addition to words and stories, she loves to dance, sing, and hike.  She likes challenges, especially flower arranging.  

 


 

SHORT-LIST in alphabetical order. (65 poems. Total entry was 2,170) 

 

TITLE

FIRST NAME

LAST NAME

tell me i’m pretty

Nicole

Adabunu

Our Country

Vasiliki

Albedo

The Monosyllabic Suicide Note

John

Alter

Distance

Alison

Binney

The Last Train

Andy

Blackford

A few beers later

Peter

Borchers

Silent Movie

John

Claxton

Revolutions

Alan

Coombe

At Gullane Bents

Alexandra

Corrin-Tachibana

The day you buy me a Mandarina
Duck rose dawn wallet

Alexandra

Corrin-Tachibana

Safe

A.M.

Cousins

Bone

A.M.

Cousins

Love’s Latitudes

Judy

Crowe

My Mother’s Alligator Pocketbook

Elizabeth

Edelglass

Roadrunner’s Crayon

Theodore

Eisenberg

From Claudia

David

Evans

I Didn’t Know My Father’s Father

Attracta

Fahy

Rear Window

Frank

Farrelly

Resurrection

Simon

Fitzwilliam Hall

Heirloom

Kate

Flannery

Flying north, a war story (revised)

Stacey

Forbes

Invisible Sisterhood

Julia

Forster

Gourds

Caroline

Freeman

My Dad Sent Me and I Got Raped

Bill

Garten

Self Portrait as a Spermatozoon

Norman

Goodwin

The Perfect Dad

Jonathan

Greenhause

Everything, for a Reason

Jonathan

Greenhause

Retreat

Katie

Griffiths

A Trumpeter in Sumy Plays the Ukrainian National Anthem…

Matt

Hohner

At the Missouri Pacific Depot, Where,
in 1931, You Holed Up for Three Days and Drank

Justin

Hunt

Blue Jeans

Doreena

Jennings

Railings

Doreena

Jennings

Secrets of the Gumbo

karla

k

To Abandon A Drowning Man

Madelyn

Kennebeck

An absence of bees

jane

killingbeck

Mr. Smith

Debbie

Knight

I say I want the world to look like poetry again

K. T.

Landon

The Steps of No. 93

Peter

Lindley

memo to Ginsberg

Paul

Lojeski

The Troubles

Seán

Martin

Sugar Cube

Aparna

Mitra

Wudu

Ariel

Mokdad

The Saoirse-Ronan-Poetry-Plan

Daniel

Myers

The Glam Night

Beatrice

Nori

I Have Kept Your Phone

Damen

O’Brien

Leaving Home at Eighteen

Eugene

O´Hare

All Saints Night

Patricia

Osborne

Sociology

Kelley

Pujol

ON THE EVE OF THE END OF THE WORLD

Liz

Purvis

Ghost Bicycle

Dilys

Rose

Stick ball cemetery

Joshua

Sauvageau

Love

Robin

Schwarz

Petrified

Diane

Sexton

The Life Galleries, Kelvingrove

Susan

Shepherd

Geography Lesson

Laura

Shore

Banana University

Di

Slaney

Petsamo

Morag

Smith

I wear my jewels like a prayer FFP22

Morag

Smith

For Leonard

Cynthia

Snow

On the Eve of the Piano Exam

Jean

Tuomey

Transformation

Jean

Tuomey

Old Man

Derval

Walsh

The Dogs of Mariupol Address their Former Owners

Arne

Weingart

The Invisible Orchestra

John

Williams

I was never subtle

Anna

Woodford

 

 

 


 

 

LONG-LIST in alphabetical order. (247 poems. Total entry was 2,170)

tell me i’m pretty

Nicole

Adabunu

News from Agnieszka/ & Just
Across the Border

Mara

Adamitz Scrupe

Invocation

George

Adams

Our Country

Vasiliki

Albedo

Love is an endurance sport

Simon

Alderwick

Mother

Kahle

Alford

the drama I missed

Nick

Allen

Selfie, Overheard, Afghanistan

John

Alter

The Monosyllabic Suicide Note

John

Alter

Dad

Nitsa

Anastasiades

Spring

Eliza

Anise

Immram

Philip

Armstrong

Sprung Song

John

Aske

The Other Ones

Ahana

Banerji

Coast

Tom

Barnett

The Boatman

Tom

Barnett

Distance

Alison

Binney

Dreams of Becoming a Local Vegetable

Shell

Bird

The Last Train

Andy

Blackford

The oral tradition

David

Bleiman

Ring

Gerry

Boland

Period

Laurie

Bolger

When the Dish Ran Away with the Spoon

Elizabeth

Boquet

A few beers later

Peter

Borchers

By the Book

Partridge

Boswell

The Return

Partridge

Boswell

Forced March

Paul

Bregazzi

Home

Nora

Brennan

Let there be poems

Liz

Byrne

Dinner For Two

Josh

Cake

Alien, 1980

Lorraine

Carey

Christmas Day 2021

Anne

Casey

Flow

Suzanne

Chick

Before Magnolia

John

Claxton

Silent Movie

John

Claxton

Halo

Colette

Colfer

The Glider

Alan

Coombe

Revolutions

Alan

Coombe

Lion Child

Raymond

Cooney

Delirium

Aaron

Corless

Keeping Mum

Alexandra

Corrin-Tachibana

Julie Andrews’ Honesty

Alexandra

Corrin-Tachibana

Snapshots from Beck Hide

Alexandra

Corrin-Tachibana

At Gullane Bents

Alexandra

Corrin-Tachibana

The day you buy me a Mandarina Duck
rose dawn wallet

Alexandra

Corrin-Tachibana

Jewel of a Flower

Christine

Cote

Fairy Tales

Christine

Cote

Safe

A.M.

Cousins

Bone

A.M.

Cousins

The Prospect

Ellen

Cranitch

Love’s Latitudes

Judy

Crowe

A 1981 Sunny, Summer Vacation at Minehead Lighthouse, Ring Old Parish, County Waterford

Leo

Crowley

My Heart Races

Brittany

Curran

Tradition

Julian

Debreuil

Do You Mind?

Gerald

DiPego

Eyass

Hugh

Dunkerley

Fire Lanterns

Hugh

Dunkerley

Leftovers of Life

Michelle

Dupont

My Mother’s Alligator Pocketbook

Elizabeth

Edelglass

Roadrunner’s Crayon

Theodore

Eisenberg

What the angel says

Nadine

El-Enany

The women who wait

Jennie

Ensor

From Claudia

David

Evans

Moon Poem

Diane

Fahey

I Didn’t Know My Father’s Father

Attracta

Fahy

Regolith

Jessamyn

Fairfield

Rear Window

Frank

Farrelly

When My Mother Went into the Woods
to Pick Mushrooms

Marian

Fielding

Resurrection

Simon

Fitzwilliam Hall

Heirloom

Kate

Flannery

Flying north, a war story (revised)

Stacey

Forbes

The Mentor of the Weak

Cy

Forrest

Some surprising things I learnt
about breastfeeding

Julia

Forster

When I looked up an ex-boyfriend’s
house on the internet

Julia

Forster

Invisible Sisterhood

Julia

Forster

Gourds

Caroline

Freeman

Me (Autistic and Unsociable)
Dating a Neurotypical

Naoise

Gale

Disassociation

Sandra

Galton

Treecreeper

Josephine

Gardiner

After Midnight

Bill

Garten

I Lost

Bill

Garten

My Dad Sent Me and I Got Raped

Bill

Garten

The Night Before

Denise

Garvey

Aftermath

Denise

Garvey

Wind creatures scratch the surface of Europa

Brandi

George

Latched

Ellen

Girardeau

I Didn’t Know

Emma

Goldman-Sherman

Self Portrait as a Spermatozoon

Norman

Goodwin

Magnolias

George

Grace

Romantic Heroes

Zoe

Green

Because Writing More Poems Can Wait

Jonathan

Greenhause

The Perfect Dad

Jonathan

Greenhause

Everything, for a Reason

Jonathan

Greenhause

Retreat

Katie

Griffiths

In Heaven

Krishnanand

Guptar

Under and After All

Peter

Hankins

Such pure leaps   drenched grass      such
a space to cross / s   le  e    p

Michele Pizarro

Harman

Everything is waiting for you

John

Heath

Deer Encounter

Mary

Hegarty

When I die

Alex

Heron

Sunflowers

Matt

Hohner

A Trumpeter in Sumy Plays the
Ukrainian National Anthem…

Matt

Hohner

Midnight Walk

Laurie

Holding

A Cage in Search of a Bird (Revised Version)

Kathleen

Holliday

We Can’t Predict the Last Time

Lana

Holman

Poem in Praise of the Hinge

Kelly

Houle

Argentina

Justin

Hunt

As I Remember It, Mom

Justin

Hunt

How Time Works on the Southern Plains

Justin

Hunt

What We Didn’t Know

Justin

Hunt

At the Missouri Pacific Depot, Where, in 1931,
You Holed Up for Three Days and Drank

Justin

Hunt

Goatskin

Rebecca

Irvin

Blue Jeans

Doreena

Jennings

Railings

Doreena

Jennings

Paris Moon

Dorothy

Judd

Secrets of the Gumbo

karla

k

Two is Company

Sreekanth

Kartha

To Abandon A Drowning Man

Madelyn

Kennebeck

Even Though He Is Not Here

James Allan

Kennedy

Pressure’s Down Boys

Peter Ualrig

KENNEDY

For Bob, on his 80th

Simon

Kensdale

An absence of bees

Jane

Killingbeck

Great Grandma Claire

Debbie

Knight

Mr. Smith

Debbie

Knight

Baldwin Beach

Mel

Konner

Frederica

Alison

Kreiss

To the Boys in My Niece’s Fourth-grade Class
Who Question the Need for a Module on Poetry

K. T.

Landon

I say I want the world to look like poetry again

K. T.

Landon

The First Time, Reclaimed

Camille

Lebel

Not Knowing

Peter

Lindley

When Time Stood Still

Peter

Lindley

The Steps of No. 93

Peter

Lindley

Memo to Ginsberg

Paul

Lojeski

The Landing of Mars Perseverance

Angela

Long

Given the State of Thing

Sandra

Longley

The Raiment of Saints

Michael

Lyle

The Body

Michael

Lyle

Drift

Kilcoyne

Marian

Test Able, Bikini Atoll

Jonathan

Marks

No Word

Jonathan

Marks

Detachment

Jonathan

Marks

Sequelae to misplaced elbows & other violations

Shey

Marque

Irrecoverable Children

Shey

Marque

Insects Turning into Women

Sophia

Marshall

White Rhyme

Sophia

Marshall

One Time Me and the Dog Swam With
the Dolphins They Let You Get So Close
You Can Touch a Fin

Michael

Martin

The Troubles

Seán

Martin

What I Do

Wende

McCabe

Knollwood Way

Wende

McCabe

Jam

Aparna

Mitra

Sugar Cube

Aparna

Mitra

this is not a protest poem

Katrina

Moinet

Wudu

Ariel

Mokdad

there was a boy

Ewan

Monaghan

When I think about leaving this body behind–

Judith

Montgomery

Pentonvillanelle

Michaela

Morgan

Small Steps

Michaela

Morgan

Rewilding

Petrova

Mulvey

Icon of the Black Madonna

Elisabeth

Murawski

The Saoirse-Ronan-Poetry-Plan

Daniel

Myers

The Glam Night

Beatrice

Nori

Progress

Rachel

Norton

For Rain

Lani

O’ Hanlon

Natural Causes

Damen

O’Brien

Things Fall Apart

Damen

O’Brien

Night Photos

Damen

O’Brien

I Have Kept Your Phone

Damen

O’Brien

In among the ruins, love

Denise

O’Hagan

Look Away

Jamie

O’Halloran

A Week in Portugal

Eugene

O’Hare

Letter to my Mother, Five Years Sober

Eugene

O’Hare

Spigot (In Memory of Tommy O’Neill, 1936-2020)

Michael

O’Neill

Sacristy

Michael

O’Neill

Leaving Home at Eighteen

Eugene

O´Hare

Seventy-One Seconds

Rena

Ong

February, 2019; Lake Michigan

Chloe

Orrock

Hecate

Chloe

Orrock

All Saints Night

Patricia

Osborne

Time

Penny

Ouvry

Gold Dust

Penny

Ouvry

Fish Gods

Ben Rhys

Palmer

Way To Go, Dad

Tony

Peyser

Pussy Riot

John

Piggott

Minna

Helen

Pinoff

My Mother’s Parachute

Eleanor

Porter

Sociology

Kelley

Pujol

On the Eve of the End of the World

Liz

Purvis

Hyperemesis Gravidarum

Shahar

Raveh

My Brothers

Kathleen

Reddy

When Love Shows Its Hand

Jennifer

Reid

A Horse Departs

Bill

Richardson

Life

Sabel                   ­

Rideau

Like

Jacqui

Ritchie

The Word Jumper

Jacqui

Ritchie

Some New Kind of Endlessness

Richard

Robbins

Against Myth

Richard

Robbins

Ghost Bicycle

Dilys

Rose

Stick ball cemetery

Joshua

Sauvageau

Present Tense

Richard

Scarsbrook

Love

Robin

Schwarz

Last train home

James

Scoles

Unspoken

Louise

Scott

Million lights

Deepsha

Seeruthen

Petrified

Diane

Sexton

Stray Cats

Jacquelyn

Shah

The Parsonage

Penny

Sharman

Even in Pristina we get ready for winter

Lesley

Sharpe

The Life Galleries, Kelvingrove

Susan

Shepherd

Geography Lesson

Laura

Shore

This is You in the Sundance Catalogue

Shoshauna

Shy

Full Disclosure

Saudamini

Siegrist

My Soul and Me

Heather

Silverman

Banana University

Di

Slaney

Petsamo

Morag

Smith

I wear my jewels like a prayer FFP22

Morag

Smith

Dementia, or Drop the Quarter and Play?

Amy

Snodgrass

For Leonard

Cynthia

Snow

The Right To Age

Heather

Soderquist

This service includes all removable components

Emma

Storr

My Daughter Left Home Yesterday

Jasper

Swann

The Clocks have Changed

Mary

Tate

On the Eve of the Piano Exam

Jean

Tuomey

Transformation

Jean

Tuomey

A Visit to the Chinese Visa Application Centre,
The Hague

Alice

Twemlow

My Old Subaru Outback

Jesse

Vasquez

Watermark

Gerd

Wagner

Actor

rob

wallis

Actor

Rob

Wallis

Then

Derval

Walsh

Old Man

Derval

Walsh

In the Woods the Mosses Speak to the Trees

DOLORES

WALSHE

The Dogs of Mariupol Address their Former Owners

Arne

Weingart

Owen’s Confession

John

Williams

Waka

John

Williams

The Invisible Orchestra

John

Williams

This Body, Not Another

Brad

Winters

Cancer Man

Amaury

Wonderling

Vimto

Amaury

Wonderling

I was never subtle

Anna

Woodford

There Once Was A Girl

Mariam

Yacoob

 

 

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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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