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The Farmgate Café National Poetry Award was established in 2019 with sponsorship from one of Cork’s most loved restaurants, The Farmgate Café. The partnership between the Munster Literature Centre and the Farmgate received the Business to Arts 2019 Best Small Sponsorship Award.
Attending 2025 Award Presentation
Limited places are available for a cosy reception at the Farmgate where the winner will receive their prize and present a short reading.
Book your free ticket to the award presentation, taking place on Tuesday 13th May at 6.30p.m. on Eventbrite.
2025 Shortlist
What Remains the Same by Alvy Carragher (The Gallery Press)
Alvy Carragher grew up by the River Shannon in Galway and Tipperary and has since lived in Louisiana, Dublin, South Korea, and Canada. She is currently based in Dublin. Her previous collections, Falling in love with broken things (2016) and The men I keep under my bed (2021), were published by Salmon Poetry. What Remains the Same was published by The Gallery Press in 2024. She is a recipient of an Arts Council Literary Bursary and has an MA in Writing from the University of Galway.
The Following Year by Patrick Chapman (Salmon Poetry)
Patrick Chapman was born in Co. Roscommon in 1968. He has published fifteen books since 1991, including ten poetry collections. His latest, The Following Year, appeared from Salmon in 2024. Also a scriptwriter, he has written radio dramas for Doctor Who (Big Finish) and Dan Dare (B7, BBC Radio 4 Xtra), an award-winning short film, and much animated television. His monograph on Robert Forster’s album Danger in the Past is forthcoming in Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series.
In Spring We Turned to Water by Michael Dooley (Doire Press)
Michael Dooley’s poems have appeared in Banshee, the Irish Independent, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, and have been broadcast on RTÉ Radio One. His debut collection, In Spring We Turned to Water, is published by Doire Press.
High Jump as Icarus Story by Gustav Parker Hibbett (Banshee Press)
Gustav Parker Hibbett is a Black poet, essayist, and MFA dropout. Their debut poetry collection, High Jump as Icarus Story (Banshee Press), was shortlisted for the 2024 T.S. Eliot Prize and the 2025 John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize. They are the 2025 Commissioned Writer for Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, and they are currently pursuing a PhD in Literary Practice at Trinity College Dublin, where they are an Early Career Research Fellow at the Long Room Hub.
Egg/Shell by Victoria Kennefick (Carcanet Press)
Victoria Kennefick is a writer, poet, editor and teacher. She completed a PhD in English Literature at University College Cork and was a Fulbright Scholar at Emory University and Georgia College and State University. Her debut poetry collection, Eat or We Both Starve (Carcanet Press, 2021), won the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize and the Dalkey Book Festival Emerging Writer of the Year Award. Her second collection, Egg/Shell (Carcanet Press, 2024) was a Poetry Book Society Choice for Spring 2024, BBC Poetry Extra Book of the Month for March as well as a Book of the Year in The Telegraph, The Sunday Independent and The Poetry Society UK.
The Shark Nursery by Mary O’Malley (Carcanet Press)
Mary O’Malley was born in Connemara in Ireland and educated at University College Galway. She served on the council of Poetry Ireland and was on the Committee of the Cúirt International Poetry Festival for eight years. She was the author of its educational programme. She is a member of Aosdána and has won a number of awards for her poetry, including the 2016 Arts Council University of Limerick Writer’s Fellowship and the 2018 Michael Hartnett Poetry Award for Playing the Octopus (2016). She was the Trinity Writer Fellow at the Oscar Wilde Centre for 2019.
Harmony (Unfinished) by Grace Wilentz (The Gallery Press)
Grace Wilentz is the author of The Limit of Light, which was published by The Gallery Press in October 2020 and went on to be named a book of the year in The Irish Independent and The Irish Times. She has received support from The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon including a Literature Bursary and a Next Generation Award. She is the inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Notre Dame in Dublin. Her most recent collection, Harmony (Unfinished), was published by The Gallery Press in October 2024.
Submission Details
The award will be €2000 for the best full-length poetry collection published in the previous year by a poet residing in Ireland. All entered books must be in English. Translations will be accepted as long as the translated poet resides in Ireland. An eligible translated example from previous years would be Diary of Crosses Green by Cork-based Galician poet Martín Veiga, published by Francis Boutle, UK. Collected and Selected volumes are not eligible unless the book is work being translated into English for the first time.
There will be three judges who will not meet or consult one another. The judges for the 2025 Farmgate Award are: Dean Browne, Mary O’Donnell & Maurice Riordan. Each judge will assemble ten favourite titles, awarding ten points to their first favourite, one point to their tenth favourite. All points will be collated to generate the winner.
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.
The Award is an initiative of the Munster Literature Centre, sponsored by the Farmgate Café in Cork City.
- Interested publishers should enter four copies of each book, posted no sooner than January 9th and to arrive no later than January 30th
- Publishers are advised NOT to use registered post, as an attempted delivery at an inconvenient time or day may result in a package being returned to sender
- Publishers should provide full contact info to receive acknowledgement of receipt
- Publishers should assure entered poets’ commitment to attend the award ceremony if selected as winner
- The winning poet must commit to attending an award ceremony at the beginning of the annual Cork International Poetry Festival. The festival will provide travel expenses, meals and two hotel nights to the winner on this occasion
- A shortlist of six titles will be published in April; the winner will be informed at the beginning of May through their publisher
Eligible poets with minor presses or presses based outside the country are advised to inform their editors of the availability of the award. An author may submit four copies themselves if their publisher cannot be relied upon.
All entries (sent by publishers only, four copies of each entered collection) to be sent to Farmgate Café National Poetry Award, Munster Literature Centre, Frank O’Connor House, 84 Douglas Street, Cork, T12 X802, Ireland.
Previous Winners
2024 Farmgate Café National Poetry Award
The Map of the World by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
published by The Gallery Press (2023)
Judges
Afric McGlinchey, Patrick Deeley and Molly Twomey.
Shortlist
The shortlist in alphabetical order: A Change in the Air by Jane Clarke (Bloodaxe Books), The Lookout Post by Kevin Graham (The Gallery Press), The Solace of Artemis by Paula Meehan (Dedalus Press), The Map of the World by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (The Gallery Press), The Swerve by Peter Sirr (The Gallery Press), and Watching for the Hawk by Breda Spaight (Arlen House).
2024 Southword Debut Poetry Collection Award
The Lookout Post by Kevin Graham
published by The Gallery Press (2023)
As of 2023, 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 and was won by Kevin Graham for The Lookout Post (The Gallery Press).
2023 Farmgate Café National Poetry Award
Medea’s Cauldron by Deirdre Brennan
published by Arlen House (2022)
Judges
Colm Breathnach, Eleanor Hooker & Thomas McCarthy.
Shortlist
The shortlist in alphabetical order was: Medea’s Cauldron by Deirdre Brennan (Arlen House), The Weather-Beaten Scarecrow by James Finnegan (Dore Press), Space by John Kelly (Dedalus Press), Jamais Vu by Paul Perry (Salmon Poetry), Raised Among Vultures by Molly Twomey (Gallery Press), and The Church of the Love of the World by Grace Wells (Dedalus Press).
2023 Southword Debut Poetry Collection Award
Raised Among Vultures by Molly Twomey
published by The Gallery Press (2022)
As of 2023, 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 and was won by Molly Twomey for Raised Among Vultures (The Gallery Press).
2020 Farmgate Café National Poetry Award
The Gravity Wave by Peter Sirr
published by The Gallery Press (2019)
Judges
The judges this year were UK-based poet and academic Ailbhe Darcy, US-based poet and academic Thomas Dillon Redshaw and Cork-based poet and publisher Billy Ramsell.
Shortlist
The shortlist in alphabetical order was: When the Tree Falls by Jane Clarke (Bloodaxe Books), The End of the World by Patrick Deeley (Dedalus Press), May Day 1974 by Rachael Hegarty (Salmon Poetry), The Gravity Wave by Peter Sirr (The Gallery Press), and Threading the Light by Ross Thompson (Dedalus Press).
2019 Farmgate Café National Poetry Award
A Quarter of an Hour by Leanne O’Sullivan
published by Bloodaxe Books (2018)
Judges
The judges this year were Cork-based Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, London-based Maurice Riordan and Paris-based Professor Cliona Ní Riordáin.
Shortlist
The shortlist in alphabetical order was: Orpheus by Theo Dorgan, The Last Straw by Tom French, The White Silhouette by James Harpur, Notions by John Kelly, Love The Magician by Medbh McGuckian, and This One High Field by Michelle O’Sullivan.
Leanne O’Sullivan, inaugural winner, said “I’m honoured to be the inaugural recipient of the Farmgate Market Cafe National Poetry Award, particularly for this book which means so much to me. I’m grateful to the judges for choosing that book and to Kay and Rebecca of the Farmgate for all the support they have shown poetry down through the years.”
Prize judge, Maurice Riordan said of the winning title, “Leanne O’Sullivan is possessed of a haunting lyric voice which, in A Quarter of an Hour, draws us into an area of surface tension where personal crisis – a husband stricken and then recovering from a deadly illness – interacts with our experience of the non-human. ‘Dawn’, the poem that gives the book its particular title and focus, captures in its evocation of the dawning world the ‘here to not here’ of becoming; and as readers we are given access throughout to that dimension between the mundane and the mythic that normally eludes articulation, but here finds expression in limpid, precise poems. At once tender, exploratory and grace-filled, this finely orchestrated collection attests to the wholeness of natural life and, resonant with folkloric wisdom, it re-awakens the spirit to a fresh sense of the mystery and precariousness of our world. It is an astonishing achievement.”
Rebecca Harte of the Farmgate Market Café said, “We opened the doors of the Farmgate Café in the English Market in 1987. Since that time poetry (and in particular, Cork’s community of poets) has been part of our working life and is a key element of what makes the Farmgate Café special. So, it seems fitting, in our 25th year, that we would inaugurate the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award, and support richness and diversity of poetry in Ireland.”
Director of the Award Patrick Cotter said, “I’m delighted we have a new award exclusively for poets living and working in Ireland. Without the generosity of the Farmgate Market Café, stalwarts, in their support for the arts, this award would not be possible.