For the seventh year, Glucksman Ireland House will welcome the winner of one of the poetry world’s most coveted prizes, the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection as judged by a select committee at Queens University Belfast. The winner, Richard Osmond, will read from his collection Useful Verses at the annual Tom Quinlan Lecture in Poetry. Osmond will be introduced by Northern Irish poets Nick Laird and Ciaran Carson. Laird is curating the Irish Arts Center's PoetryFest, at which Osmond will also read on Saturday, November 3rd.
Richard Osmond works as a wild-food forager, searching for plants, fruits and fungi among the forests and hedgerows of Hertfordshire. He received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2017.
Seamus Heaney himself inaugurated the first Tom Quinlan lecture in 2011 at Glucksman Ireland House to endorse the importance of the first published book of poetry in a poet’s literary life. The lecture series, established by the Quinlan family, is named for Tom Quinlan in honor of his nearly 70 years as a poetry teacher and scholar. Quinlan, a member of Glucksman Ireland House since 1997, also reads at this event.
