Kerry Hardie's We Go On wins the Pigott Poetry Prize 2025
Kerry Hardie's ninth collection We Go On has won the 2025 Pigott Poetry Prize, Ireland’s most valuable poetry award. The announcement was made on Wednesday 28 May 2025 at the opening night event of the Listowel Literary Festival in the Listowel Arms Hotel. Kerry Hardie was unable to attend the ceremony, and the award was collected on her behalf by Paddy Bushe.
We Go On was published in the UK and Ireland in February 2024 by Bloodaxe Books. This is a book about the irreducible core of what it is to be human in a world that changes constantly yet repeats and repeats. The book is mostly specific to a landscape the author knows very well yet sometimes ventures beyond, always with the awareness that fear is our constant companion, but also joy.
Now in its twelfth year, the Pigott Poetry Prize continues to highlight the extraordinary talent shaping contemporary Irish poetry. The winner of this year's award, Kerry Hardie, received €12,000, with €1,000 awarded to each of the two finalists. The other two shortlisted titles were Crash Centre by David McLoghlin (Salmon Poetry) and The Shark Nursery by Mary O’Malley (Carcanet Poetry).
Selected from a strong field of submissions, this year’s shortlist was chosen by renowned poets Moya Cannon and Peter Sirr, who praised the richness and emotional depth of the entries.
Previous winners of the award published by Bloodaxe Books are Miriam Gamble (2020), Ailbhe Darcy (2019) and the late Matthew Sweeney (2013), who won the inaugural Pigott Poetry Prize with his collection Horse Music.
Reflecting on the significance of the prize, sponsor Mark Pigott KBE commented:
“It is a joy and a privilege to support the Pigott Poetry Prize and to honour the creative spirit of Irish poetry. I would like to thank Moya Cannon and Peter Sirr for their thoughtful adjudication and to congratulate David, Kerry and Mary on this well-deserved recognition. Their work exemplifies the strength, beauty and importance of the poetic voice todays world.”
Ned O’Sullivan, Chairman on the Board of Listowel Writers’ Week, said
“We are deeply grateful to all the poets who submitted their work for this year’s competition and to Mark Pigott KBE for his ongoing, generous support. Our congratulations go to the three shortlisted poets whose words inspire, challenge, and uplift us.”
Full details of the award are on Listowel Writers' Week's website: https://writersweek.ie/pigott-poetry-prize-2/
The three-book shortlist was featured in The Irish Times of 16 May 2025. Read online here.
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Kerry Hardie was born in 1951 and grew up in County Down. She now lives in County Kilkenny with her husband, the writer Seán Hardie. Her poems have won many prizes, including the Michael Hartnett Award for Poetry, the National Poetry Prize (Ireland), the Katherine and Patrick Kavanagh Award, the James Joyce Suspended Sentence Award (Australia) and the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry (USA). Her Selected Poems (2011) was published by Gallery Press in Ireland and by Bloodaxe Books in Britain. Her books have been published by Bloodaxe in both the UK and Ireland since 2014, starting with her seventh collection, The Zebra Stood in the Night, which was shortlisted for the Irish Times–Poetry Now Award. This was followed in 2020 by Where Now Begins. Her ninth collection, We Go On, was published by Bloodaxe in 2024 and won the Pigott Poetry Prize 2025. Kerry Hardie is a member of Aosdána.
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For digital or print review copies of We Go On, please contact Christine Macgregor at publicity@bloodaxebooks.com.
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BOOKS OF THE YEAR PODCAST PICK FOR KERRY HARDIE
Books for Breakfast podcast, Books of the Year, Thursday 19 December 2024
Kerry Hardie’s ninth collection We Go On was chosen by poet Adam Wyeth as one of his poetry picks on the Books of the Year edition of Books for Breakfast on 19 December. Kerry Hardie’s collection was given a lovely introduction by Enda Wyley at 33:30. Adam then spoke about why he had chosen We Go On as one of his poetry books of the year. He read an extract from Kerry’s poem ‘Grief’.
‘I love Kerry Hardie – she’s an incredible poet, and this collection is just extraordinary writing. To me she is the Tomas Tranströmer of Irish poetry, which is the highest accolade […] she has this stark, plain-spoken precision, but this lyrical depth, and you just know that this is a collection you’re going to read for the rest of your life.’ – Adam Wyeth, Books for Breakfast (Books of the Year 2024)
Adam features from 8:04. Kerry Hardie is discussed from 33:30.
https://booksforbreakfast.buzzsprout.com/1162427/episodes/16221232-70-books-of-the-year-with-adam-wyeth-and-henrietta-mckervey
Both Kerry Hardie and Aoife Lyall were interviewed on Books for Breakfast on 29 February 2024 ahead of their joint launch in Dublin. Kerry Hardie features from 7:09 and Aoife Lyall from 18:50.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1162427/14601325
INTERVIEW ON RTÉ RADIO 1's POETRY PEOPLE
Poetry People, RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday 16 June 2024, 7pm
Kerry Hardie was interviewed on the final episode of the inaugural series of RTÉ Radio 1’s new weekly poetry programmePoetry People. She was in conversation with host Rachael Hegarty about her life and poetry. In her introduction, Rachael said that Kerry’s poems have been likened to ‘dark and gorgeous hymns to mortality’.
Kerry read and introduced her poems ‘At the Château Lavigny, Switzerland’ and ‘Thirteen’ from her ninth collection We Go On.
Kerry features from 17:29. https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/poetry-people/2024/0616/1455037-poetry-people-sunday-16-june-2024/
REVIEW COVERAGE
'We Go On, the title of Kerry Hardie’s ninth collection, the third with Bloodaxe, echoes Beckett’s grim mantra of stoic endurance, ‘I can’t go on, I’ll go on.’ But there’s little grimness here, rather Hardie’s characteristic acceptance of the duality of experience, and determination to express with utter clarity even its most mysterious aspects. [...] As ever with Hardie, there’s a visual artist’s attention to small detail,how the light shifts from day to day, how the wind sounds or the clouds change shape.' – Nessa O’Mahony, Poetry Ireland Review
‘… the overall effect is of language summoned and galvanized in a sensitive and searching book.’ – Vona Groarke, The Irish Times
‘Kerry Hardie’s deceptively simple We Go On explores…vulnerabilities: the fragility of being human in a fickle world. She writes beautifully about the spectre which haunts us all: our mortality.’ – Rachel Mann, The Tablet
‘We Go On, Kerry Hardie’s ninth collection, is an astonishingly well-crafted and striking consideration of the glory of our fractured and increasingly fragile world […] These are poems where the rhythms of hymns, ballads, elegies and laments, with more than a nod to the Bardic tradition, are honed and whittled to an arresting and haunting clarity. Nothing is superfluous here, every line and metaphor is carefully considered to stitch meaning and imagery together, securely and beautifully.’ – Linda McKenna, The High Window
'Reading Kerry Hardie’s We Go On I felt in the presence of wisdom. […] This is attentive, care-full poetry – beautiful to read.' – Kay Syrad, ARTEMISpoetry
[28 May 2025]
