2025 Highly Commended - Aoife Imray

​Congratulations to Aoife Imray as one of the highly commended applicants to this year's scholarship. Aoife is a 2nd year student in Digital Humanities and Information Technology, undertaking English as her minor field. She has previously been published in local papers and newsletters. Aoife was awarded the runner up prize of the prestigious Cassandra Jardine prize and subsequently had her article published in The Telegraph. Aoife's writing handles themes of family, nationality and feminism among other themes through both English and Irish.

​Our judges were very impressed with Aoife's work, saying “the writing here is sure and confident, at times demanding in a way that generates a precious depth of emotional engagement with the reader – both emotionally raw and poetically charged. It explores love, loss and existential weight through

intimate and vulnerable storytelling. Brave themes are absurdly explored and told. "Concussion (I miss Ellen)" appears simple, even conversational, at first. However, close attention to its use of repetition, dialogue, and variations on the verb "to miss" reveal the care that went into its construction. "Mary and I" revisits a scene that’s a staple of Irish literature, but the wit that permeates everything from the description of "God’s twitching, hungry body’ to the use of capital letters in the final paragraphs signals a keen writerly intelligence at work.”

Concussion (I miss Ellen)
My sister has a concussion
And the world is upside down in an instant.
And suddenly I am crying now.
Her eye is the galaxy,
purple and red are melting out from her, blossoming around her pupil. Her face is a painting, black is streaking down
(too much mascara, bad for her lashes)
My sister has a concussion and I am crying
because somehow I missed it.
One fall, six calls, a trip to the doctor, a missed exam, a night spent crying.
I keep on missing it.
The crushes. The dinners. The jokes. The news. I keep on missing it.
My sister has a concussion now,
And two rows of braces,
And laughs at everything,
And gets terrible grades now,
And when I think too hard about her now I cry.
You don’t understand it.
I am certain you don't. There is no way you could. She is 17, but she isn’t.
She is 9 and I am teaching her how to do a flip on the trampoline Let the whole world turn upside down
And now you can float - just for a second
And now you are flying - just for the moment
And now you’re a bird
Weightless and wrong
Seeing the world how you command it.
She is 12 and I am showing her the new eyeshadow palette, The world of a woman grown is at our fingers
Adulthood in a thin, white box
Purples to reds to life to death - the whole life in colour.
My sister has a concussion and I am crying
In the college boxroom
polaroid of us blue-tacked and looking at me mad.
If you don’t have a sister, You don’t get it now.
And I’m certain you won’t.
When I breathe, she’s on my mind.
“Yes, I’ll pay”
“No, he shouldn’t do that”
“No, that looks bad”
“Yes, you can have half my heart,
carve out the aorta and hold it in ur hand sticky, you can have it now”
“Yes, you are like a half of me”
“No, you wouldn’t be the better half. And that’s rude to say by the way.”
“Yes, of course I miss you”
“No, I can’t come home this week.”
I drink in time with her like I’m an addict
I want to hoard it all and let it wash over me
hide it away and take it out of its treasure chest when I am lonely (now). Time is slipping away from me now.
My fists grasp at the sand tight, and the sand doesn’t care.
I love you.
I want to see you. I am missing you. 


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