National Poetry Competition

And it was just for that night.

And then the poem got commended in the National Poetry Competition.

And so it got a lot of attention.

And it's the first poem in that competition, in the history of that competition, to have a swear word in the title.

Um, uh, my first encounter with Sexton's work was the debut chapbook he did with Lifeboat Press of Belfast, small Belfast press.

And on the strength of that alone, uh, like on, think just the chapbook I'd liked him damn for a featured reading at the Cork International Poetry Festival, and the next thing I'd spot by him then was that, uh, that wonderful, ig- playful as you say, full of, like, imaginative innovation, uh, poem book, The Zoo Animals, that, that won the, uh, the Poetry Society's national, so-called National Poetry Competition, it's the International Poetry Competition.

And, and, and I've been looking forward to the first collection that would contain all those poems.

So when the Super Mario collection came out, I have to say [laughs] I was nonplussed not to see my favorite Stephen Sexton poems in, in, in, in, in, in, in his book.