Patrick Kavanagh’s timeless A Christmas Childhood, William Butler Yeats’s Easter 1916 and Paul Durcan’s Making Love Outside Áras an Uachtaráin have been chosen as among Ireland’s best loved poems of the last 100 years.
A shortlist of 10 has been chosen by an independent jury from public nominations received as part of the RTÉ A Poem For Ireland project.
Over the next five weeks, running up to the public voting deadline on Sunday March 8th, RTÉ will be asking the public to choose their favourite of the 10.
All 10 poems will be featured in full on the RTÉ A Poem For Ireland website, accompanied by information from the RTÉ archives .
The site will also feature performances of each poem by past and current finalists of Poetry Aloud, the national poetry-speaking competition for secondary school students.
The full list of poems is: A Christmas Childhood by Patrick Kavanagh, A Disused Shed in Co Wexford by Derek Mahon, Dublin by Louis MacNeice, Easter 1916 by William Butler 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 and When All the Others Were Away at Mass by Seamus Heaney.
The winner will be announced on Friday March 13th, 2015.
