Carver wins Moth Nature Writing Prize for 'deeply funny' work combining science and poetry

Genevieve Carver has won The Moth’s Nature Writing Prize for "Postcards from a Fulmar", a "deeply funny" hybrid of science writing and poetry.

The prize, run by the Moth magazine, is in its third year, and was judged by author Max Porter. It awards writing of the highest quality that reflects the writer’s relationship with the natural world.

Commenting on Carver’s work, Porter said: "It’s such an interesting and surprising hybrid, which manages to be deeply funny and very sad at the same time, an unusual feat in both science writing and poetry, even more unusual when the two are blended. The ironic and the tender are perfectly fused, and formal innovations are cleverly tethered to meaning. Both the birds and the language were thrillingly – and in unexpected ways – alive in this piece."

Carver, whose poetry has been published in journals such as Mslexia, the White Review and the North, is currently Poet in Residence with the University of Aberdeen’s School of Biological Sciences, where she’s observing and writing in response to their work studying bottlenose dolphin, porpoise and harbour seals in the Moray Firth, as well as the fulmar colony on the uninhabited island of Eynhallow in Orkney.

"Being chosen by Max Porter as the winner of The Moth Nature Writing Prize is huge for me," she said, "especially for work from my residency with the University of Aberdeen, as it highlights the important research they are doing into these incredible birds and shows what can happen when arts and sciences work together".

The prize consists of €1,000 and a week at Circle of Missé, a retreat for writers and artists nestled on the banks of the river Thouet in the Loire Valley in France.

"Postcards from a Fulmar" appears in the winter issue of the Moth alongside the winner of this year’s Moth Art Prize Sheila Rennick.

Porter also commended work by the award-winning author Susannah Dickey, who was longlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award last year; Leah Naomi Green, Lance Larsen, and Sammy Weaver, former winner of the prize. 

Although the Moth will cease publication next summer, The Moth Nature Writing Prize, as well as the Poetry Prize, Short Story Prize and Caterpillar Poetry Prize, will all continue, with increased prize funds, and with the winning stories and poems to be published online in the Irish Times.