A Poem for Ireland

A Poem for Ireland is a campaign being run by RTE that encourages the public to vote for their favourite Irish poem from the last 100 years. The purpose of the campaign is to celebrate Irish poetry, and in particular the vast wealth of Irish poetry of the past 100 years. The public were asked to choose the stand-out Irish poems of the past 100 years. The long list of 130 nominations has now been whittled down to just 10 poems by the jury and the public are now asked to selected the winner which will be revealed on March 13.

On http://apoemforireland.rte.ie/ all 10 poems are printed in full, and there's information on each poem and poet, plus video and audio clips from the RTÉ archives on this website. Every week on RTÉ Radio and Television, there'll be items about all the poems on the shortlist on RTÉ One's The Works (Fridays, 8.30, RTÉOne) and RTÉ Radio One's The John Murray Show (9am, weekdays, RTÉ Radio One). The public voting deadline is Sunday, March 8 and the poem with the most votes will be revealed on Friday, March 13. You can vote at rte.ie/apoemforireland or by Freepost to A Poem For Ireland, PO Box 12575, Freepost F5087, Dublin 4.

The 10 shortlisted poems are:

• A Christmas Childhood by Patrick Kavanagh
• A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford by Derek Mahon
• Dublin by Louis MacNeice
• Easter 1916 by W. B. Yeats
• Fill Arís by Seán Ó Ríordáin
• Filleadh ar an gCathair by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh
• Making Love Outside Áras an Uachtaráin by Paul Durcan
• Quarantine by Eavan Boland
• The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks by Paula Meehan
• When all the others were away at Mass by Seamus Heaney