Farmgate Café National Poetry Award Shortlist

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.