“Hopefully, we will be able to hold the festival as normal, next May, in what will be Writers’ Week’s 51st year,” says Fr Gaughan.

Those interested in entering the poetry competition are encouraged to explore a local to global perspective and reflect on Ireland’s own history of hunger and migration.

The annual competition uses poetry to raise awareness about the global justice issues.

“It will be impossible for us to hold on to the ways we lived parish in the past. The parishes of tomorrow will be ‘communities of intentional disciples’ sustained by committed and formed lay people.”

“Love of agriculture and the land has been a favourite theme for poets down the ages. Patrick Kavanagh and Seamus Heaney have written passionately about farming.”

“True art has a close affinity with the world of faith ... art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience”.