WritoryWRITORYWrite Your Own Victory

National Honour · August 2026

🇮🇪

Ciaran Parkes

🇮🇪 Ireland · leading poet of the nation's field


“Baggus Plasticus”

87out of 100
Creativity23/25
Emotional Impact19/25
Structure17/20
Language18/20
Theme10/10

Baggus Plasticus I'm the softest animal you can imagine, boneless, more amorphous than a jellyfish, taking form from wherever I am. Water is my moving engine. See my grazing mouth, the trailing twisting tentacles of my handles. I own the ocean, a faceless apex predator, drifting, shaping islands from my legion of disposable bodies, making the whole world in my image. Even chewed up, bitten into pieces, I can survive. I'll swim some day in every creature. I'll be in every mouthful of food. I'm empty of life completely. I'm floating lightly. Nothing kills me.

From the judges

A sharp, sustained persona poem whose sinister plastic-bag voice turns ecological warning into memorable, well-crafted menace.

Share this honour · tag @Writory

Enter the September contest
Ciaran Parkes retains all rights · published with the poet's byline as a National Honour