SCION Flanagan from Mary Immaculate Secondary School, Lisdoonvarna is the winner of the intermediate category in the annual Poetry Aloud competition, organised by the National Library of Ireland and Poetry Ireland.
Poetry Aloud, an annual poetry speaking competition for post-primary school students across the island of Ireland, was launched in 2006. Since then, it has grown enormously from just a few hundred entries to over 1,700 this year alone.
The Poetry Aloud competition comprises three stages: the regionals; the semi-finals; and the final. This year, over 118 schools took part in the competition, including Mary Immaculate Secondary School in Clare, at 18 regional heats in venues across the country. Today’s finalists were then chosen at two semi-finals involving 149 participants. Three other Lisdoonvarna students reached the semi-final stage
A native of Ennis, Colin McGann has been editor of The Clare Champion since August 2020. Former editor of The Clare People, he is a journalism and communications graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology.