Young Kildare poets embrace school competition
Overall winner Lily McNally with John MacKenna and Carmel Quinn Photos: Jimmy Fullam
IT ALL began with a suggestion by a Deputy Head to re-visit the idea of a literary competition for primary school kids in south Kildare in the wake of the demise of the Cecil Day Lewis Bursary Award following Covid.
And so, from such little acorns the John MacKenna Cup took up the mantle for Scoil Dhiarmada poetry awards, and the overall winner this year was Lily McNally, announced in the school hall recently.
Lily is in sixth class, and has won a prize in every year of the competition.
“There used to be this big literary award named after [Poet Laureate] Cecil Day Lewis sponsored by Bord na Mona, but it fell through around 2018-2019,” explained teacher Carmel Quinn.
This award was set up in 2011 by the Athy Heritage Centre to celebrate the celebrated poet’s links with the south Kildare area.
The judges this year were Eoin Kirk the recently retired Deputy Head, Mary O’ Hara the school secretary , and Mary Kaye another retired teacher.
“He says he doesn’t remember it, but Eoin suggested we should start our own competition in the school, and this is now our fourth year,” she said proudly.
“I knew John MacKenna the writer and poet here from Castledermot, his mother was principal when I was here … and so we named the competition after him.
“I rang him and asked him and he very generously said he’d provide a cup, and on it is inscribed his words ‘In time we know where we belong, It’s there we find our voice and song’.
“The theme this year was ‘Springtime, and the winner got her name engraved on the [perpetual] cup, and a lovely crystal trophy for herself.
“The competition is for classes 2nd-6th inclusive, with four prizes in each, a category for poems in Irish.
“The children all look forward to it and become very interested, so we keep most of the work here in schools there can be no interference from home.
“They get very, very enthusiastic, and it raises their interest in poetry and writing – it is the antidote to anxiety.
“They start on the poems just after Christmas, and we collect them at the mid-term break."
Carmel concluded: “I hope the competition continues because there’s lots of room on the trophy for more names."
