3rd Year student, Luke Power, was recently crowned the overall winner of the 2025 Poetry Aloud competition which was held in The National Library of Ireland in December.
Poetry Aloud is an annual poetry speaking competition for post-primary students across the island of Ireland. It is organised by Poetry Ireland and the National Library of Ireland, with support from University College Cork. The competition celebrates the art of poetry recitation and the power of the spoken word. Participants across three categories – Junior, Intermediate, and Senior – learn one prescribed poem and one poem of their own choosing from selected anthologies
This is Luke’s second year competing in the competition where last year he finished as runner up in the Junior category. He began this year’s campaign by competing in the semi-final stages back in November where he was selected as one of the 12 participants to go through to the finals. For the semi-final, Luke selected “The Cabinet Table” by Irish poet Paul Durcin as his poem of choice as well as reciting the prescribed poem, “The Sun’s Return” which was written by Lorna Shaughnessy.
For the final, Luke competed against 20 other participants and recited for the judges his selected poem, “Testing the Greene” by Siobhán Durcin and the assigned poem “Among Treetops” by Alvy Carragher. Luke was crowned winner of the intermediate section as well as the overall competition winner where he was presented with a trophy of a blackbird, which was commissioned by the family of Seamus Heaney.