Trinity researcher Gustav Parker Hibbett has won the John Pollard international poetry prize for their debut poetry collection High Jump as Icarus Story.
The prize was presented to Hibbett at an award ceremony at Trinity. The award is valued at €10,000 and Hibbett is the seventh recipient of this award which began in 2019.
The poet commented on the award and the collection’s success saying “Since publishing ‘High Jump as Icarus Story’, there have been so many small ways, almost daily, that I’ve been disarmed or humbled or bowled over by other people’s care and generosity, by the time so many people have taken simply to sit with my writing”. In their speech, Hibbett thanked the team at Banshee press and their partner Abbie for their support.
The award was administered by the Oscar Wilde Writing Centre, and judged by Trinity English Professors Una Mannion, Eoin McNamee and Tom Walker.
Gustav Parker Hibbet is a self-described “Black poet, essayist and MFA dropout”. Hibbett was raised in New Mexico, USA. They graduated from Stanford with a BA in English literature and they moved to Ireland to pursue their PhD in Literary Practice at Trinity.
Hibbet has published poetry regularly in tandem with their academic pursuits, and has been published in Irish literary magazines The Stinging Fly and Poetry Ireland Review.
High Jump as Icarus Story was also shortlisted for the highly prestigious T.S Eliot prize, placing Hibbett in the company of literary sensations and former shortlisted writers Ocean Vuong and Claudia Rankine.
The award winning collection reimagines Hibbett’s adolescent career as a high jump athlete and places it in the mythic context of the high-flying Icarus. The poet uses this context as a jumping point to explore blackness and philosophy.
In 2024, The University Times interviewed Hibbet, and discussed the publication of their debut collection with Banshee Press.
