Sacred Poetry Prize 2026: The Winning Poems
Edinburgh Festival of Sacred Arts
The winners of the Sacred Arts Trust Competition for Religious Poems by Poets under Thirty were announced at this year’s awards ceremony, judged by Christine De Luca and Robert Crawford, with Scottish Gaelic assistance from Peter Mackay.
The judges were impressed by the standard of all the shortlisted poems, and greatly enjoyed meeting the prizewinners at the awards ceremony.— from the judges
30 before 30
Naomi Reiss
“And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age …”
– Luke 3.23
This year’s the year to renovate the loft
at last. To plan and execute that long-
anticipated siblings’ road trip. See
the city lights. Go on retreat. Hydrate.
Invest in proper walking sandals (John
would know). Do something really nice for Mum.
Attend as many weddings as you can,
failing your own. Get smashed at all of them.
Tell jokes. Yell sometimes. Talk to kids. Do spoken
word. Don’t freak. Don’t panic. Learn the names
and calls of birds. Smell flowers. Skinny dip.
Get some careers advice. (From anyone
but Dad.) Pick up a language. (Greek? Egyptian?)
Figure out at least one kind of wine
you truly like. Declutter. Ditch the socials.
Lift. Embrace your gifts. Learn self-esteem.
Learn boundaries. Get out of Nazareth
at least once monthly. Seize the day. Be brave.
Pour Jeanne
Mattea Gernentz
Woman with banner torn, I am
of your marrow. I glimpsed sober angels
clutching your feet as you slept. Are you
wild like me? Without constancy, this world cannot
make sense of you. Be my mirror, without fear. We wait
alone, on our knees in the stone chapel. If this incline
is prayer, I give it. I can do no other. Outside,
a sparrow knocks, thrashing, as if it knows
the heart of the secret: that one must die to feed the flame.
Christine De Luca, judge’s remarks
This poem is in honour of Joan of Arc. If we’ve got this right – this is an ekphrastic poem – it’s as if the poet is staring at a particular painting of Joan; and imagining being that person. In a few concise lines, it encapsulates the essentials – ideas and feeling. It has an arresting start as the poet relates to Joan:
Woman with banner torn, I am of your marrow
And again:
Be my mirror, without fear…. If this incline is prayer, I give it
and a strong, satisfying ending with the image of a sparrow that knows this is not going to end well for Joan.
So, a well-made poem, restrained, and with the emotion controlled.
About the poetMattea Gernentz, originally from Tennessee, studied English and Psychology at Wheaton College in Illinois, then, after a visit to London, came to the University of St Andrews to take a Masters Degree in Museum and Gallery Studies. Recently, she was selected as one of the Scottish Poetry Library’s Next Generation Makars. She has written poetry since high school and feels a strong attraction to works of art that have a spiritual resonance. She works as a curator at Birds’ Nest Gallery in Edinburgh and has read her work at several poetry festivals, including the Dandelion Festival.
Seallaidhean Ùra / New Visions
Elissa Hunter-Dorans
Gàidhlig
Chì mi i uaireannan i, sealladh ann am frasan geala,
nuair a lasas a’ ghrian air rèilichean,
uinneagan chàraichean, an t-sneachd.
Tha an ìomhaigh aice gach turas
ann an obair-chriadha no ann an clach bhàn,
gun fheòil, gun fhalt fada no ròb gorm.
Nam inntinn tha statue,
sàbhailte eadar creag is coinnlean blàtha,
a’ toirt anail dhi anns an riochd a leigeas iad leatha.
Nuair a nochdas i do naomh ùr, aon latha a dh’aithghearr,
bidh e tro phiogsailean, ann an clò no air sgrìn
sealladh air coinneal ghlainne.
Ìomhaigh gluasadach, faodalach
air a thoirt beò Leis-san fhèin,
Ach a-nis, ’s e làimh an duine a-mhàin
As urrainn dhuinn aithneachadh.
Agus fhathast canaidh mi gur e sealladh a th’ ann.
English
I see her, sometimes, a glimpse in white flashes
When the sun sparks on railtracks,
Off car windows, or snow.
Her image is each time,
in ceramic or pale stone
With no flesh or long hair or blue robes.
In my mind is a statue,
Cradled between rock and warm candles
making her breathe in the shape they permit.
When she appears to a new saint, one of these days
It will be through pixels, in print or on screen
A vision upon a glass candle.
A moving image, an object
Breathed to life by him only,
But man-made is all we can now know.
Still I will call it a vision
Robert Crawford, on the poet
Elissa is an Edinburgh-based writer and artist from Inverness. She writes in Gaelic and in English; she was the Scottish Poetry Library’s first Next Generation Young Makar for Gaelic poetry; and she has performed at poetry festivals including Push the Boat Out and StAnza. Last year her writing was published in Taigael, an anthology of short stories in Gaelic and Taiwanese. Elissa was the 2025 Gaelic judge of the Wigtown Poetry Prizes, and has a fascination with religious and folk visual culture. She is studying History of Art at the University of Edinburgh, and Peter Mackay commended Elissa’s prizewinning poem as ‘A flickering image of the Virgin Mary, somewhere between dream, the corner of vision and the pixels on a screen, in Gaelic that is clear and concise’.
I keep thinking of nowhere and meaning you
Kate Millar
looking at me, or the heartwood
shades of my irises. I keep thinking of you
thinking of me, only the spaces I might inhabit
as the light inhabits doors.
But once I was in that doorway
I felt the anxiety of being made
into the image of love, immaterial
like a dream you had, that I didn’t want
to violate. Do not look at me
like this, I beg you, or I will never be known,
though it feels so good, so holy
to pine for the image of something
like the idea of God, casting light onto the threshold,
forgetting the splinters on the doorjamb
that lodge in the palm, and Christ
raiding the kitchen for sugar and steak
to serve to every unremarkable, unlikeable guest,
pulling down my fauvist paintings, each certificate,
the clothes on my back. He throws them in the bin and lights
the fireplace, lays a blanket on the floor for me
to sit on. The air contains no incense, no basil scent
of fabric softener. Only the charcoal smoke
and my own panic-sweat of exposure.
I keep thinking of nowhere and meaning you,
Christ, your absence. Your inconvenient returns.
I find myself praying and sleepily writing nonsense:
the unseen pebble is the pecan on the kitchen floor.
Divorce me, love, from the abstract. I want
incarnation. Make me the spaces
you inhabit as the light inhabits doors.
Christine De Luca, judge’s remarks
A fascinating poem which explores or muses on God’s inescapable love for the individual that seeks us out and makes demands on us… and how that feels. Not an easy topic to write poems about. I liked the beginning of the poem – the use of the word ‘heartwood’ – the core of the tree trunk – in the context of God searching the human heart through the heart of the eye, the iris. This lends a kind of intensity to the imagery. A few stanzas further on she returns to the image of wood, seeing the idea of God as like ‘casting light onto the threshold, forgetting the splinters on the doorjamb that lodge in the palm.’ And, in the central section, the way the poem deals with ambivalence in a relationship with God. It builds from a bit of resistance, (wrestling with the numinous God; to surprise, (‘your inconvenient returns’ – not always welcome) and finally towards acceptance not just of the idea of Christ but of the incarnational Christ who often requires costly action from us. It deserves to be read several times!
About the poetKate Millar grew up in Edinburgh, studied English at the University of St Andrews, then completed her MFA in Creative Writing at The New School in New York City where she won the Paul Violi Prize for Poetry. She is a Clydebuilt 18 Poetry Fellow and has published work in Gutter, the Cleveland Review of Books, and the LA Review of Books. Her interests include modern American poetry, and mysticism in poetry. Quoting the French philosopher, Simone Weil (Vey-i), she has stated that ‘To be attentive to someone or something is the “purest and rarest form of generosity.” Kate Millar is a poetry tutor at the Scottish Universities International Summer School.
Robert Crawford, judge’s remarks
The first-prize-winner of the 2026 Sacred Arts Trust Competition for Religious Poems by Poets under Thirty is Naomi Reiss. Naomi Reiss studied Medieval and Modern Languages at Cambridge, then took a Master’s degree in Biblical Studies at New College, Edinburgh, where she recently completed her PhD entitled ‘Writing Across Prison Walls: Documenting Incarceration in Early Christianity’. She is interested in aspects of both ancient and modern imprisonment, and in the way that biblical texts are implicated in modern discourses around imprisonment and the pastoral care of prisoners. Her publications include ‘Christ the Jailer’ and ‘Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My: Imprisoned Animals and Humans in the Acts of Paul’. When I read the poem, I thought for a moment about a radio series made more than thirty years ago by the poet Michael Symmons Roberts called, I think, ‘Contemporaries of Christ’, which focused on present-day people who were around the age that Christ was when he was crucified. But Naomi’s poem, made up of thirty sentences, is wholly distinctive, and wholly her own. At once snappy and kicking, yet deeply thoughtful, this poem, entitled ‘30 before 30’, impressed Christine and me for the way it fused form and function.