Mayo writer wins prestigious £5,000 poetry prize after 60 rejections

MAYO resident Roberta Beary has won joint first prize for her poem After You Self-Medicate with Roethke's The Waking Read by Text-to-Speech App in the prestigious Bridport Prize international creative writing competition.

Her work has appeared in the New York Times Modern Love series and she is the Haiku Foundation's roving ambassador in the UK.

Acclaimed novelist Kate Atkinson said the Bridport Prize helped her find ‘my voice’.

Roberta’s poem found a home with the competition after it had been rejected 60 times, yet she never stopped believing in it.

Having been a single parent and worked in New York, Washington DC and Tokyo as a finance attorney, she is a firm believer in not giving up.

“Life’s vicissitudes keep coming at you but have to keep going, even if you don’t know you’re going forward you are," she says.

The competition’s poetry judge, Inua Ellams, described the poem’s ‘halting startling imagery’ and ‘comments on feminine interdependence and maternal love’ as the reasons it stood out for him. “We glimpse the human spirit and expand our understandings of contemporary life.”

Said Roberta: “Now I know it’s real. I was thrilled to get that call from the Bridport Prize telling me I was joint first.”

The first prize winners - Roberta Beary and Chaun Ballard from Alaska - share the £5,000 poetry prize.

Roberta lives in Westport with her husband, Frank Stella.

Now in its 50th year, the international writing competition helps fund Bridport Arts Centre. Passionate about discovering writing talent from around the world, previous winners include novelist Kate Atkinson, MBE, Kit de Waal, and Deepa Anappara.

Many writers have launched their careers with The Bridport Prize and ended up on the best sellers list.