Rookie: Selected Poems by Caroline Bird and Some Integrity by Padraig Regan have made the Polari Prize longlists!

Rookie has been longlisted for the 2023 Polari Book Prize, whilst Padraig's debut collection Some Integrity is on the longlist for the Polari First Book Prize. The Polari Prize, which was first launched in 2011, is the UK and Ireland's only prize dedicated to celebrating LGBTQ+ literature, and celebrates a wealth of genres and forms.

The shortlists will be announced on September 27th 2023,with the prize ceremony taking place at the British Library on November 24th. You can read the full longlist here.

Congratulations to Caroline and Padraig!

Caroline Bird is one of Carcanet's most popular poets. Her startling instinct for metaphor, the courage of her choice of subjects and the integrity of her witness, set her apart: a poem is a risk, and it has to be a risk worth taking for the poet and for the reader. Rookie presents a formidable body of work composed over two decades from one of the poetry world's most energetic and consistently compelling voices.


Some Integrity is the much-anticipated first collection from Eric Gregory Award winner Padraig Regan. The poems bring something new to the Irish lyric tradition. Queerness provides a perspective, aware of the porous and provisional nature of our bodies. The book's social encounters and exchanges, its responses to the work of artists, its figures in a landscape, and its consideration of food and desire, work as capsule narratives and as an exhilarating extension of that lyric tradition.