This year’s Eavan Boland Award winners, Alvy Carragher and Ali Choudhary, have just been announced — but what does this literary decoration entail?
Eavan Boland was an Irish poet and author whose work served as a mouthpiece for female oppression in the Irish literary sphere. In 2021, the Eavan Boland Award was founded by Poetry Ireland with the spirit of this mission in mind – offering a platform from which writers in the early stages of their career could be formally recognised for their work. This year’s recipients of the award, Alvy Carragher and Ali Choudhary, have been granted the unique opportunity to apply for the bursary, as well as residency at Trinity College Dublin and the University of Manchester, as a result of their achievement. This article aims to introduce both poets’ backgrounds and works, to acquaint you with the writers that our very own university has deemed exceptional enough to support.
Ali Choudhary is a UK-based writer and poet whose work explores themes of violence and intimacy. His debut chapbook, Night of the Fire, was published in May 2025. Shortlisted for the Tempest Prize in 2025, his poetry also appears in several magazines, including the Diode Poetry Journal, Protean Magazine, Sontag Mag, and Frontier Poetry. Within the landscape of his work, Choudhary frequently employs the effects of sonic poetry – an element that pairs powerfully with the harrowing imagery of grief and destruction that is featured in some of his most prominent pieces, such as ‘The Ventriloquist.’ As noted by Kylie Ayn Yockey, an early reviewer, “The poems of Night of the Fire […] take physical, sexual, emotional, self-inflicted and community beatings to heart, unfurling fist after fist into cupped hands ready for holding peace, acceptance, justice, and the hands of everyone else hurting.”
Alvy Carragher is an Irish poet who spent the majority of her formative years between Galway and Tipperary. Since then, she has lived in numerous other countries, ranging from South Korea to Canada. These substantial shifts in environment all occurred within a relatively short time frame, simultaneous to the creation of her first novel, The Cantenkerous Molly Darling. Set in rural Ireland, one might think this continuous displacement would prove disruptive to her writing process; instead, Carragher stressed in an interview with The Irish Times that, “by living in a world so far removed from Ireland and our culture, ‘home’ became something [she] could define.” In fact, Carragher claimed that this constant remodelling of her lifestyle is one that mirrored the authorial process itself – “so much upheaval means that I rebuilt my life over and over, starting from scratch with very little besides the contents of a suitcase and some notions. That seems similar to sitting down to write: over and over, we sit down and start again.”
Published in 2024, Carragher’s most recent book of poetry, What Remains the Same, is a collection that delves into an array of emotional experiences, from the vicissitudes of Carragher’s personal life to her country’s misfortunes. Her poem ‘The Snow Spirit’ captures a beautiful winter stillness, and is a perfect read in preparation for the impending cold – certainly, an unavoidable reality considering the Irish climate. Her book, The Men I Keep Under My Bed, revolves around a more focused subject matter: that of sexual vulnerability, loneliness, and the feeling of alienation in a big city. While there is something of yourself to be discovered in all of her poetry, her first collection, Falling In Love With Broken Things, may perhaps be the most pertinent to students pursuing their studies at Trinity; it explores the feelings associated with expanding one’s world beyond the comfort of home, presented in deliciously descriptive excerpts of experience.
To any aspiring young writers who hope to one day be listed among the recipients of this prestigious award, below is an exclusive pearl of advice that Alvy Carragher was generous enough to share with us:
“If you want to be taken seriously as a writer, you need to take yourself seriously first. Commit to it, and make it a central part of your life. Silly as it might sound, sit down and write. Then sit down and rewrite. Read. Repeat. Get used to the idea of rejection, and don’t let it stop you. Put your work out there and start some new work. If other people won’t publish it, do it yourself. What I mean is that nobody will give you permission, and there will never be a perfect time.”
