The winners of the 2014 MATRIX Poetry Competition were announced on Thursday 16th October in the Linenhall Library, Belfast, by Professor Iggy McGovern, Professor of Physics at Trinity College Dublin and award winning poet.
This year there were two main categories in the competition – one for people with a science or technology background and a separate category for non-scientists. Entrants were asked to submit a previously unpublished poem of up to 14 lines on the theme of science.
The winner of the science category was Fabian Campbell-West, a senior engineer at Queen’s University who is currently researching ways to program computers to recognise people. His “Computer Coder’s Sonnet” delighted the judging panel with its clever parallels between coding and poetry. This category proved so popular this year that a runner up award was also presented. This went to last year’s winner, David Crozier, for his poem “Turing”, a moving tribute to the Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing. David is a Technical Marketing Manager at Queen’s University Belfast.
The winner of the new non-science category was David Brunnen with “Linked In”, a witty take on the demands of social media. David is the editor of online publication Groupe Intellex. Unfortunately he was unable to attend the award ceremony, but Eoin Lambkin was on hand to receive his trophy.
This is the second year of the competition, which was introduced by MATRIX to highlight the links between science and the arts.
The Chair of the MATRIX panel Bryan Keating said,
“We are delighted with the response we received this year and the standard was very high. Professor McGovern, who has a foot in both the arts and science had a tough job in judging the competition but ultimately the awards have all gone to very worthy winners.
“One of MATRIX’s primary roles is to represent the voice of high tech industry but from the poems we received it is obvious that many of our scientists and technologists have also an artistic and creative voice. We look forward to running this competition again next year and we may expand it to an All-Ireland contest.”
The winners of each category received a £250 cheque and a beautiful engraved crystal trophy. The runner up received £100 along with their trophy.
After the award ceremony, Professor McGovern gave a reading of his latest work “A Mystic Dream of 4”, a sonnet sequence based on the life and times of the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton.