Ron Carey

Ron Carey

Ron Carey (b. 1948, Limerick) has been a winner or finalist in a host of poetry competitions: The Bridport Prize, Lightship International Poetry Prize, Cinnamon Press Poetry Awards, Fish International Poetry Prize, Gregory O’ Donoghue International Poetry Awards, Hugh O’Flaherty Poetry Award, iYeats Poetry Prize and the Wasafiri New Writing Prize for Poetry – the list goes on.

He says ‘there was a tradition of storytelling and reciting in the family and in the community’ which contributed to his genesis story as a writer. The poems in his shortlisted collection Distance are, he writes, ‘centred on relationships between people in Time and Space’

After a professional life that started on Shannon Industrial Estate, cutting and drilling steel, Carey took up poetry seriously in his 60s while working as a director of an engineering sales company in Dublin. He received an MA in Creative Writing in 2015. He reminds younger poets that ‘a poet does not have to come fully formed out of the workshop.’ Indeed, it is the relationship between ourselves and the world, Carey’s work implies, that produce the meaningful stuff of poetry.

Forward Prizes History:

• 2016 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection, shortlisted for Distance (Revival Press)