Peter Sirr won the Michael Hartnett Poetry Award 2011 with his collection The Thing Is. The winner was announced by Limerick County Arts Office which inaugurated the award in memory of the late Co Limerick poet Michael Hartnett (1941-1999).
In their citation, the judges, Tom McCarthy, Mary O’Malley and James Harpur described The Thing Is as a ‘book of great poetic power, a complex and illuminating work of art’. ‘Peter Sirr has created a marvellous narrative in poetry, a work of great technical skill in verse-craft that is lifted beyond mere craft by the power of reflective waiting. Page after page, as the hours spent within poetry go by, a sense of heightened autobiography is achieved and a new level of making poems is arrived at.’
