As we continue to look back at some of the previous winners of Wales Book of the Year, today we revisit a reading from Ailbhe Darcy’s poetry collection, Insistence, which was crowned Wales book of the year in 2019. This reading was originally recorded as a part of Wales Arts Review’s 2020 Digithon.
Voting for Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice 2022 is now open. Wales Arts Review is proud to once again be sponsoring the people’s choice award, and to celebrate we’ll be looking back at a range of archive interviews, articles and reviews with previous WBOTY winners. Don’t forget to vote for the 2022 WBOTY People’s Choice winner, here!
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Ailbhe Darcy reads ‘Silver’ from her winning poetry collection Insistence.
Ailbhe Darcy was born in Dublin in 1981. She studied for her PhD and MFA at the University of Notre Dame in the US, and taught there and at the University of Münster in Germany. She is now a lecturer in creative writing at Cardiff University. Imaginary Menagerie (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), her first book-length collection, was shortlisted for Ireland’s dlr Strong Award. Darcy’s second collection, Insistence, was published by Bloodaxe in 2018 and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Irish Times Poetry Now Award. It won the won the Pigott Poetry Prize, Ireland’s largest poetry prize. It also won the Roland Mathias Poetry Award, the English language poetry category of the Wales Book of the Year Awards, and went on to be awarded the overall prize, Wales Book of the Year 2019.
Insistence by Ailbhe Darcy is available from Bloodaxe Books.
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