6th Year Student Wins Poetry Prize

Congratulations to Chelsey Minehane (6th Year), who has won 3rd Prize in the national PDST ‘Write a Poem’ competition. She will collect her prize at a special ceremony in Dublin on November 7th.

Entrants were asked to think and write about a vivid memory or moment from their childhood and to to consider how a memory can link us emotionally to people or places.

Barley Waves

by Chelsey Minehane

Memories float on a summer breeze,

Deadlines entirely forgotten,

Grandma’s beetle green Seat chugged to life,

Wrapped in a heat haze of blankets

We went in search of barley waves.

Cool air tickled my fingers;

Shoulders jerked to her mowtown groove

The car bobbed up and down,

Between bracken, wood and wheat,

Steadily approaching barley waves.

The saline air blew chill,

Grass like knives on sandled feet.

Children young and old,

With spades and shovels scattered

Infinite sands with their constructions

Beside barley waves.

Sweet suncream spray,

Speckled ladies lie brown in the sun,

Cool sand soothes burned soles

Father finds a brown crab in a pool,

The child overjoyed –

Releases it to the barley waves.

Black ringlets, crisp with salt,

Loping up the dunes,

Time for steaming chips

From white plastic punnets

Golden like the sun that refracts

Off the placid sea,

Sinking behind the barley waves.