The Farmgate Café National Poetry Award was established in 2019 with sponsorship from one of Cork’s most loved restaurants, The Farmgate Café. 55 valid entries were received for the Farmgate National Poetry Award for the best original collection in English (or translated into English for the first time) published by a poet living on the island of Ireland in the calendar year of 2025. The award is worth €2000. This year’s judges are the poets Ailbhe Darcy, Maya C. Popa and Thomas Dillon Redshaw. In a year where a debut collection does not win the overall Farmgate Café National Poetry Award, the highest scoring debut collection in the competition will be awarded the separate Southword Debut Poetry Collection Award (this award is for €1000).
Limited places are available for a cosy reception at the Farmgate where the winning poet (not yet announced) will receive their prize and present a short reading on 12th May to open the Cork International Poetry Festival.
The event is free but ticketed (Eventbrite).
The full list of five finalists (in alphabetical order) are as follows.
Shortlist
After Party by Dean Browne (Picador)
Dean Browne is an award-winning poet from Co. Tipperary, Ireland. His debut collection After Party is published by Picador and is a Poetry Society Recommendation. Browne received the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2021, and his pamphlet, Kitchens at Night, won the Poetry Business International Pamphlet Competition; it is published by Smith|Doorstop (2022). His poems are widely published internationally, in outlets such as New York Review of Books, Columbia Review, London Magazine, Poetry Review, The Irish Times, The Stinging Fly, PN Review, Poetry Magazine (Chicago).
Convent of Mercy by Tom French (The Gallery Press)
Tom French‘s collection Touching the Bones (Gallery Press, 2001) was awarded the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, 2002. The Gallery Press has also published The Fire Step (2009), Midnightstown (2014), The Way to Work (2016), The Last Straw (2018, Irish Times/Poetry Now Award shortlist), The Sea Field (2020) and Company (2022), shortlisted for the inaugural Yeats Society Poetry Prize and winner of the 2023 Pigott Poetry Prize in association with Listowel Writers’ Week. The Convent of Mercy, his eighth collection, was published in July 2025.
Hymn to All the Restless Girls by Annemarie Ní Churreáin (The Gallery Press)
Annemarie Ní Churreáin comes from the Donegal Gaeltacht. Her third poetry collection, Hymn to All the Restless Girls, published by The Gallery Press (2025), appears in The Irish Times Best Poetry of 2025 and among the RTÉ Culture Best Irish Books of the Year. She is a recipient of the Arts Council’s Next Generation Artist Award, the Markievicz Award and the Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship. Ní Churreáin is a recent Writer in Residence at The Hawthornden Foundation, New York. She is the poetry editor at The Stinging Fly.
The Slipping Forecast by Ross Thompson (Dedalus Press)
Ross Thompson is a poet and teacher from Bangor, Co. Down. His work has been widely featured in many local and international magazines and anthologies, and he has contributed to television and radio. Most recently, he wrote and curated A Silent War, a collaborative audio project that has been adapted by Northern Ireland Screen into a series of archival short films. His poetry debut Threading The Light was published by Dedalus Press in 2019. His second collection, The Slipping Forecast, was published in April 2025.
Chic to be Sad by Molly Twomey (The Gallery Press)
Molly Twomey grew up in Lismore, County Waterford and now lives in Cork. Her first collection, Raised Among Vultures was published in 2022 by The Gallery Press. It was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize for Best First Collection and won the Southword Debut Collection Poetry Award. She was awarded the 2023 Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary and an Arts Council Literature Bursary in 2024. Her second collection, Chic to be Sad, was published in July 2025.
Judges
Ailbhe Darcy is a poet and a critic. Her most recent collection of poetry is Insistence, published by Bloodaxe Books, which won Wales Book of the Year and the Pigott Prize for Poetry in association with Listowel Writers’ Week. In February 2020 she presented Alphabet on BBC Radio 4, a programme about Inger Christensen’s extraordinary poem alfabet and its resonance in the age of climate change, produced by Megan Jones.
Maya C. Popa’s third collection, If You Love That Lady, is forthcoming from W. W. Norton in July 2026. Her other collections are Wound is the Origin of Wonder (W.W. Norton, 2022) named one of the Guardian’s recent best books of poetry, and American Faith (Sarabande, 2019), runner-up in the Kathryn A. Morton Prize judged by Ocean Vuong and winner of the North American Book Prize.
Thomas Dillon Redshaw is the founding editor of New Hibernia Review (1996—2006) and the former editor if Eire-Ireland (1974—1995). He is the author of numerous essays on the poetry of John Montague, and on the poetry of Brian Coffey, John F. Deane, James Liddy, Thomas McCarthy, and George Reavey. He has published extensively on Liam Miller’s Dolmen Press, as well as on the Gallery Press. His most recent collections are Ago: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry, 2024) and Heart Walk (Brighthorse Books, 2024).