Peter Dix Memorial Prize for Poetry

Congratulations to Stella Borrowdale, who has been awarded the Senior Poetry Prize 2025. The trophy marks the life of Peter Dix, who was killed in the Lockerbie bombing; the trophy is shown, and is on display in the Library. The sculptor is Joe Sloan.

 

Stella's poems were on the theme 'Forgotten People', and here are two pieces from her portfolio:

Penelope

She unweaves her shroud in darkness at sundown in solitude.
Candles are forbidden in this shrine.
Midnight interrupts - leaving space for prayer in His name:
Three words spoken three times, one syllable.

Specific breaths are taken, reserved only for this moment.
Three minutes delegated to His memory in her mind.
Aglow with finest offerings: two libations; a golden kylix
sits quietly at His setting, no name inscribed.
 
Absence shapes this deity, yet she prays He will be here.
No responses are required in this shrine.
His hand and word together are sufficient in her mind;
He speaks the words; she burns for ten more years.

To question is to be human, yet she removes her dampened veil
Lest this man beneath her stairwell be the one.
This deity is damned: bound to slay one hundred men
For one more hour to forget His forsaken wife.

Marigold

The year slips away after September
And again it will happen in March
As the last puddle dries. I try to remember;
Did you shudder when it fell dark?
Is there any freedom in knowledge?
Or are there wounds heard in the sound
Of a voice that isn’t yours,
Spoken watchdogged all around

This clock was never ticking,
Long out of use with no sense of time.
I have no strength; you have no freedom,
But you can laugh—I gave you mine.
In the heart of my desires,
You are more than fleeting shadows;
Solid and substantial,
Allowed escape from wildflower meadows.

Tomorrow will be summer,
But it won’t ever be the same
Since you left your precious garden
In monsoon, which you call rain.
A chrysanthemum on the sill,
A marigold in the mirror,
Hidden carefully so only you can see the damage.
You tend to her so softly, attempt to form connection,
Yet a flower with no mouth can’t help you manage

To speak the words you wish were spoken,
Words you kept inside your head
For the benefits of hidden comforts in the sound:
The sound you crave - of darkness,
So you’ll leave your greenhouse in the rain.
By August, I will promise to never write about you again.

 

'The Green Island'

At Voices of Poetry on Sunday night Delia Brady read out her own poem, 'The Green Island', based on her family's connection to the Famine of the 1840s. It had impressed Mr Canning as an entry to the Senior Poetry Prize this year.

 

The Green Island

Just home
To the sheep that
graze,
the ruins of the cobbled
house-now used for shearing-
once held
Us

Before the land turned to ribs,
And with bleak November came
funerals-
no headstones, no plaques-
only the keening of the women,
heard from across the lake

How many infants-
Born with tired eyes and faces-
Thrown into the waters for
their heinous crime,
Unworthy in the graying priests' eyes,
of entering the kingdom of God

Their bones found, and left-
No names-
Never even given them-
Dead on Arrival
from starved mothers
in starving fields.

'The Wish I Regret'

 At Sunday's Voices of Poetry, Nia Jessup from Third Form read out her interesting poem 'The Wish I Regret:

 

The wish I regret …

A teenager 

Not an adult but not a kid either 

That's what we are

The between

We have to act like adults

But also have fun 

And enjoy our younger years 

While we're still young.

5 years. 

That's all it is,

It sounds so short.

Yet it feels so long. 

The wish to grow older 

The wish to be free 

From all the things that our parents see. 

I regret the wish.

We sit in neat rows,

But our minds are a maze,

Wandering far,

Through uncertain days.

We carry our futures

In our minds each day,

While pieces of childhood

Are slipping away.

The wish to grow older—

It burned like a flame,

But age came with shadows

And burdens with names.

I wanted to rush,
Through the long restless days.
Not knowing I'd look back
And long for those ways.

I regret that wish …

 

Junior Poetry Prize 2025

Congratulations to the winner of this year's Junior Poetry Prize, Suvi-Helene Cully. Here is her poem 'When the Storm Comes'.

When the storm comes
It is an unexpected turn,
an emotional wave of change
an unusual gust that at first feels haunting.

the wind will sway and mock you
the rain will hand you your sorrow
the trees will pity you, standing tall above you.
 
But when all seems lost,
Birds will hum
light will shine through
the beautiful sky will renew.

And It will no longer be nothing but a breeze.
Something to look back on,
Part of who you are.
A memory of the past.

Petals in the Wind

At the Voices of Poetry event on Sunday night, Finn Woolsey read out this affecting poem he wrote, about a childhood friend in difficult circumstances.

 

Dear Rose, 

freshly sprung from seeds, deserving of kindness from the soil and gardener that feeds.

Just beginning to bud, so tender, so frail,

No thorns yet to guard you, no armour or veil.

Before you knew what it meant to bloom, 

Hands meant to cradle instead sealed your doom,

Held you down, stripped your petals away,

Leaving your vibrant hues faded and gray.

On my top bunk, surrounded by our crew of stuffed rabbits and bears,

We played pirates, out sailing the silent storm,

While I told you about the wolf that follows me in the shadow of the moon,

and you told me about the gardener that smothers his lips to yours at noon.

Silently and swiftly, the storks swept down and whisked you away,

while the soil wept and the wolf began to prey.

You were gone, without goodbyes, without a petal for me to treasure and clutch to my chest.

I asked the Northern Pintails in their nest if they had seen traces of you in winds from the west.

They turned away, their wings heavy at rest.

I'm haunted by memories of a faceless girl, 

Dragging me down the rocky shore in a whirl,

Her bare feet on stone, while I trailed behind,

Yellow wellies splashing, our shadows intertwined.

Now I search for her in every face I see,

Hoping she smiles back at me from the sea’s golden shimmers,

as the sun disappears behind the waves, 

and so does she.

 

Junior Poetry Prize

 Congratulations to Nia Jessup, winner of the 2023-24 Junior Poetry Prize.

My Love

I lost you in our favourite time of year.
In that beautiful spring
with the sound of birds around us,
your favourite sound.

Our love for each other lasted 13 years 4 months and 9 days
Those years, months and days were my favourite.
Not a day goes by without me missing you.
Wishing you were here to see one more Birthday or one more just one more Christmas.

After you had gone my whole world fell apart.
You may not be here now
but you're still with me in heart.

My connection to you is so strong,
It reminds me of an infinity symbol,
it will always be forever.

You always told me that if I ever miss you, pray or if I feel alone, pray.
I may not see you as much now but I will always talk to you.
I will call for a quick chat
at the same time as every day
at 8.30 or around then.
Because you told me that prayer was like a telephone.

I will also always read Psalms Chapter 29, Verse 11 to 13
to remind me of you.
That was your favourite book of the Bible,
 you used to tell me all about it,
and now it is mine.

I can't wait for the day that I will see you again
It might be a long time away
but it is even longer for me.

Senior Poetry Prize 2023

Congratulations to Isabella Treacy, who wins the Peter Dix Memorial Prize for Poetry for the second year, and to Yilong She, who receives a Commendation. First, some of Isabella's winning portfolio.

A Funeral for your Lies 

and an Exhumation of my Truths

 

You could call this a funeral

for your Lies,

and an exhumation 

of my Truths.

 

I was buried next to this unseemly secret

six feet deep with the roots.

Lord knows I should still be

pushing daisies.

 

You took my life 

but it's not the end.

 

I was put in the ground

and now I'm back from the dead.

You should have known 

that something which was never living

can never really die.

 

I’m getting tired of crawling all the way.

I've had enough!

Isn’t it obvious?

Holding the pain like I’m holding my breath

Now that I’m on trial.

 

I won’t be beaten by this,

Not yet.

 

And it’s my whole heart

Being tried and tested,

But it’s mine!

I won’t be buried or burned this time.

 

Who’s the equivocator now?

Keres, help me not to forget,

While I’m on trial,

Wait until the beast comes out.

 

Oh you fool, there are rules,

I’m coming for you.

You can try to outrun this scourger

 but you can’t escape.

 

Holy water cannot save you now.

Now your reckoning begins

and La Pelona will lead you 

to your yawning grave.

I took a journey to the unknown

And I came back changed, 

I can feel it in my bones.

It feels like I've been away for an era

but nothing changed at all.

 

Say goodbye to who I was.

 

You told me to calm down

and asked why my heart had turned rotten?

It still gets my blood boiling.

And now I look at you 

through crimson tinted glasses

 while I stay stuck in the crossfire 

of my own thoughts.

 

La Pelona and I walk side by side

over your spoiled, evil spirit.

You left a deep scar

which I still try to bleach out.

 

I’ll dig a grave for your lies

with a beating heart of stone,

and I’ll never spare 

my sympathy

for someone like you.

Kitchen floors and

 Saints at doors

 

How could I have known

what I was about to trade. 

 

All I knew was that I saw a way

and you saw the worst in me.

 

As I reached for the clouds 

you made sure that I 

would return

to your weightless embrace.

 

I still search for a reason

not to end up in denial,

like those long summer nights

stolen away as the moon falls.

 

Despite the lies you bound to me

                                                          I still love you.

But, I won't wait anymore,

for the parts of you

that are never on show.

 

Yet, my heart yearns 

to lay on the kitchen floor

under you’re unfeeling gaze

as moonlight paints your face.

 

And every morning 

when you wake,

I'll still love those 

mangled bits of you.

Mine Forever

 

I was there,

When you fell from the clouds.

 

When I found you,

 I saw a place like paradise in your eyes,

then I knew that my end would come soon.

 

Those modest saying that meant so much to you,

with me they’ve never quite got through.

I’ve always needed bigger words.

 

I was so full of love that I could hardly breathe.

There isn’t a language for the things I feel.

 

It was such a relief and a horror

To be known so perfectly,

So completely. 

 

You were the one who made me believe,

that I could fly again.

 

Now we’re a story that I don’t want to read.

 

Loving you was easy when I balanced on a knife's edge.

Now your spirit follows me wherever I go,

and I still hear your melody from those days
as you haunt me in the night.

 

When the sun comes up and I go blind,

For a moment, I can blot out the memory of your face

and forget every line, every wrinkle.

 

But, if forever gets too lonely

I’ll meet you where our souls

Meet our bones,

Because in my mind

You’re mine forever.

Junior Poetry Prize 2023

Congratulations to First Former Giacomo Borillo, who won this year's Junior Poetry Prize, remembering his grandfather, who died a year ago.


The sun shines brightly on that beautiful beach.
The sand sweeps softly through the wind.
Its beauty spans as far as the eye can reach,
And all my woeful worries are left behind.

My grandfather’s hand is clutched in mine,
As we watch the whales pass us both.
I want that memory frozen in time,
But they say loss is just a part of growth.

How I wish I could that memory forever,
But I’m a world away from my wish.
And how I’d wish that world away,
Just to be back on that beautiful beach.

Senior Poetry Prize 2

More excellent poems from the recent Peter Dix Memorial Prize for Poetry, this time from Yilong She.

Boating

Moss-encrusted rocks littered along the bank
Low-lying leaves of a willow weeping
just above the stream,
in shining rings rippling a still sky.
The vast dawn spread over the waters,
Where reflections like sparks, bright and vivid
Catch the expanding ripples and the misty air,
Some troubledness in the wails of the birds.
The trees afar are taller than the horizon
Shadowing the breeze to the river depth,
Where salmon dip and plump-trout
Glide under the cattail and bladderwort -

A white creature
Mingling a descending ball of light,
Erect on one golden cane.
Calling out, and louder yet,
The mist and parading shadows flee,
Between the rows of glowing, golden foliage
Between the flowing, flowering ripples
her wings beat on.
And call back, in deeper mimicking, -
Let me be stirred
By the murmuring trees or the humming birds;
Will she again sing the next spring?
 

 

Rain

A long dream, cold.
Damp cracklings of fire
In vicious tenderness
Sing, ring, and fling
Itself down. Drowning
The soft fragrance of
Hot oil in the street-
Vendors’ buns. Lights
In green, yellow and
Red blinking rigidly,
Mechanical liveliness
That sparks a humid
Splash of fresh earthly
Smell. Always wishing;
With myriad hands
It carries on looking,
Listening to the plops,
Pitters and splatters -
Searching, always.
Children passing by, a
Long row of iridescent
Flowers, hanging low.
Singing in overt unison,
A sweet, unadulterated
Chorus.                                               
 

Sea

White flowers that bloom
folding on itself
white petals sprouting from the blue
whirling along the selkies’ song.

The shimmering and swelling of the shifting current
surging and plunging
and again surge
blowing its soul into the withering desert
 
I watch it rise above my ankles and retreat back
again and again
with a fresh tenderness
and I will continue to watch it, rolling on.

Senior Poetry Prize 2022

 Mr Canning writes:

The Peter Dix Memorial Prize for Poetry 2022 was awarded to Transition Year pupil Isabella Treacy. It was the overall consistency and quality of her submitted body of five poems based on or inspired by the idea of either or all of  MEMORIES or JOY or ECHOES which edged out some other very strong entries. It was fantastic that so many Transition Year students entered.

Knots by Isabella Treacy

Once we were a pair,
Content to stay
Transfixed in each other's steady gaze,
You look at me now with hollow eye sockets
And smile,
Yesterday I was a word,
A word that I could never find
Left with no voice to speak it,
Now I am a happy song
Placed on your lips,
By this sound I was resurrected,
Life was not aware of me
And I wasn’t aware of life,
Now, its flames warm my heart
Please, don't ever stop singing,
You showed me that life
Wasn’t about extending your time,
But I had already crowned that same old passing
In such an idyllic swiftness,
For everything dies
And may the days
All pass me by,
As the stillness covers my ears
Until all sound disappears,
And I am left again with a word,
And no one left to speak it.   

Junior Poetry Prize 2022

Congratulations to Delia Brady, who has been awarded this year's Junior Poetry Prize for her work 'The Moon':

My Moon

I have a moon of my own.

She haunts me from a distance, dimly aglow.

She seems to reach out, but even if I stretch my fingers

I know I’ll never reach her.

So strange to know a moon by name, to see her sit next to me.

She seems the saddest for one who shines so bright.

She seems to only call me when it’s night, perhaps 

The loneliest time.

My cherished moon, I look for her always.

Her indecisive presentation keeps her alive, but

Puts me in a guessing daze.

And on the nights she does not show herself,

I wait impatiently for her return.

I never hear what she tries to say, her volume smaller than a whisper,

The distance dissolves her message throughout the pin-prick of stars.

My beloved moon, I admire her from afar.

She is certainly the most beautiful thing in my galaxy.

A million planetary rings could never outstand her creases, curves, and spots.

And when she takes centre stage to 

Eclipse what we always see

A million people gather just for her, and yet

We still can not see her.

My precious moon, I’ll never know her touch.

As incredulous and tempting as she is, I know that

If I inched any closer, I would only be grasping at air.

So, I will watch her from here.

I will reach up and stretch my fingers. I will cup my hands 

And I will imagine I am holding her; for when one is

Deeply in love with the moon, I believe that is all I  can do.

My rare and mysterious, my ever changing, my center of dreams,

I love her

Because she is My moon

And I will never stop loving her.

Senior Poetry Prize 2022

 

The Peter Dix Memorial Prize for Seniors is this year being launched on Poetry Day Ireland.
 
All entries are to be typed and emailed to Mr Canning by the evening of Friday 27th May.
 
Entries should contain a portfolio of  between two and five poems based on or inspired by the idea of either:-
MEMORIES
or
JOY
 or
ECHOES
Poems should be at least ten lines long, and typed.  The winning entry will be based on the overall standard of the entrant’s body of poems. There will also be a prize for the best poem if it is not in the winner’s selection. Other strong entries will be posted here.

The English Department will also give smaller book-tokens to strong entries that do not win the Prize.  
 
You can treat the ideas of  ‘Memories’ or ‘Joy’ or ‘Echoes’  in a free way: any connection is fine, as long as the poems are connected by image, inspiration, theme, form, situation, context …

The Peter Dix Memorial Prize for Poetry was presented by the Dix family in memory of Peter, who died in the Lockerbie tragedy in 1988.  The Memorial (pictured), by sculptor Joe Sloan, is kept in the Library and inscribed with the names of past winners.

Junior Poetry Prize 2021

 Congratulations to the winner of this year's Junior Poetry Prize, Alison Wang.

Here is her poem 'Freedom':

I sat in a big, colourful ‘room’
As light faded in and out on the endless ceiling.
I dreamt about
The thick snow,
The withered leaves,
The endless desert,
the thorns and roses they talked about.

One day, the wall cracked.
I saw a blur of light drifting indistinctly.
Everyone stayed far away;
They only saw the darkness.
I stepped forward,
Groping in the dark.

They couldn’t feel
The harsh piercing coldness,
The crunchy leaves,
The heating sands,
The prickling pain of thorns.

Having the same picture,
They saw the black dot.
I saw the massive brightnesses surrounding the black dot.
My walls shattered
While they were still in the ‘room’.

The Submarine, December 2020

 

This term’s edition of The Submarine magazine has now been published, and you can read it here online. Well done to editors Avi Johnston and Edna Johnston.

Pupil contributors (both writers and artists) include Maybelle Rainey, Alexander Fought, Sveva Ciofani, India Hassett, Julia Kaptein, Archie McKeever, Carlotta Laudien, Florian Zitzmann, Eliot Tschierschwitz, Georgina Stewart, Eliz Kolat, Shannon Walker Kinsella, Aeladh-Bradley-Brady, Hedley Butler, Gloria Rose, Lola Garofano and Tita Schack.

More Junior Poetry Prize entries

Here are two more poems from candidates from the recent Junior Poetry Prize.

'Too Far To Say Goodbye' by Marco Trolese

Too far to say goodbye 

But never too far to feel it. 

As soon as the news came in——

it was like I’d been stabbed in the heart

A piece of me had died. 

The trees outside blossomed while the pollen swayed in the summer's breeze. 

Inside there was stone cold silence. Hearing someone's breath was like a megaphone being put to your ear. 

Whether he was in the garage fixing his MG or in the garden, everything was an adventure to him. Always making me dust myself off, after a trip to the beach before getting back into his brightly polished Volkswagen polo.

 

He reminds me of a river. 

As he flows away on his next journey, his memories will last forever 

A candle describes his life, when lit he was born and kept shining even in the darkest hour until finally blown out softly. 

Everyday him watching over me, keeps me going 

Trying to be a better person each day, 

Trying to make him proud 

I love you grandad 

Too far to say goodbye 

'Summer' by Yilong She

out with spring calling onto summer,

chill of the weary clouds into

the clear azure skies,

waves of searing heat 

clashing against the golden radiant lights

buds blossoming,

fugitives of the wild flaunting in the day;

trees swaying in the whooshing wind

dancing to the mockingbirds’ calls

yet, what creature of land could 

grasp the heavenly divinity of 

Summer?

having eyes to see, but

blinded by the glistening rays of white and silver