Winners

A big thank you is in order for all those who entered our Communicate Science Poetry Competition. We received many more entries than we could post to the blog, so commiserations if you're poem didn't make it.

We've picked three poems which we particularly enjoyed and each of these three poet/scientists will receive a copy of Seamus Heaney's New Selected Poems to further inspire them. These books come courtesy of World Book Night.

And the winners (in no particular order) are:

• Cell Wall, I love You by Madhankumar Anandhakrishnan
• Pulling the Thread by Ben Parker 
• Switch by Emily Dodd

Well done all!

This seems like a good time to sum-up my World Book Night experience. I signed up well before Christmas, not entirely sure what was going to happen, and certainly not really expecting to be picked as one of the 'givers'. When I was picked, I was a little nervous - I wanted to ensure the books went to homes where they would be enjoyed but also to places where books might not normally be a number one priority.

In the end, I received a lot of books to distribute (more than the 48 which had been mentioned) and spent much of Friday and Saturday giving them away. In some cases, I gave them to specific people. In others, I left them in a place where I knew they would be snapped up quickly. I left them in libraries, but I also left many on park benches and in bus stops. I hope there are many people around Cork who found one of the books and took it home and it brought a bit of happiness to them. Maybe, as the organisers suggest, they will pass the book on and the process will start all over again.

In general, although there were a few issues with the organisation of things like the website, the event seemed to run pretty well from my point of view. I was very happy that I gave away the book I did and can recommend taking part to others. You can sign up to take part in World Book Night 2012 on the website.