​The judges described Ellen as:
"A remarkably self-assured writer, with impressive range and depth to her poetry and prose, resulting in deeply personal yet universal meditations on life and living. goodbye blue monday finds glimpses of strange beauty in everyday gestures and moments. Spring deploys rhyming couplets with a deft lightness that breathes life into well-worn forms and tropes. In general, the writing is alive with excitement and surprise, generated by careful and bold use of language and fired by an impressive, informed imagination. It is also beautifully introspective, with rich and evocative imagery underscored by dreamlike detachment."

We publish part of Ellen's submission here:
Spring
​I did not mean to feed this yearning-
fill with famished fuel the burning.
Embers smouldered, greying flames
grew from ash around your name.
This earth was parched, these roots all rotten,
snowdrop-speckled beads of cotton
crumple under beating wings.
You make me scared of all these things.
A weight like need comes over me;
Persephone- the sweetest seeds
burst upon my tongue like stars,
pops of pain and spitting sparks.
Ephemera, ephemeral,
with eyes sharp shards of emeralds.
The syrup of your smile so sunny,
your sweetness sticks to me like honey.
Cherry red and turning pink,
I blew the bubbles back with ink.
Dusted brown from soil, your fingers;
the pressure of your pulsing lingers.
Water streams like softening dew,
drops of air and glass and you,
clear, like what I've always known
within this bed, our flowers grown.

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. 


​

​This year's judges had this to say about Claire's work:
"Her style is original, experimental and ambitious; there is an impressive depth of engagement with language and form, and agility in both imagery and tone, all of which demonstrates a playful and questing approach to poetic tradition. Each poem fully commits to its chosen form, whether it’s erasure or a fractured reworking of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. ‘Snakebites’ is particularly impressive—a poem as crisp and fizzy as the beverage that shares its name. Overall, this is compelling and innovative work shaped by biblical and mythological references, subverting familiar content into fresh storytelling, weaving themes of memory, identity, shame and inevitability."

Below is Claire's submission, "Snakebites"

When her predawn wife hands over what looks like her heart,
Adam swallows.
Of course it got stuck in her throat.
Choking on love is all she’s known.

The cavity in her chest whistles when she runs too fast.
After the memory of another woman’s tongue on hers
God ate Adam’s fistsized heart-beating.

Her being is tied to the other by the false rib knot, unthreadable.
So, she eats the apple, the breast of a mother never-nursed from,
Runs Eve’s juice over her lips 
like fingers dipped in honey.