Shortlist announced for Farmgate Café National Poetry Award
Patrick Cotter, director of the upcoming Cork Poetry Festival, pictured at the Farmgate Cafe at the English Market in Cork. Picture: Des Barry
The Farmgate Café National Poetry Award was established in 2019 with sponsorship from one of Cork’s most loved restaurants, The Farmgate Café, the English Market. The partnership between the Munster Literature Centre and the Farmgate received the Business to Arts 2019 Best Small Sponsorship Award.
Revived in 2023, the award will be €2,000 for the best full-length poetry collection in English (including translations from other languages) published in 2022, by a poet residing in Ireland. Judges this year were Colm Breathnach, Eleanor Hooker and Thomas McCarthy. Six poets have been shortlisted for the award.
The winning poet will receive their prize and present a short reading on May 16th to mark the opening of the Cork International Poetry Festival. The festival runs until Saturday May 20th and features readings, discussions and workshops by over forty poets from Ireland and abroad.
- For more details see www.corkpoetryfest.net
is a bilingual poet. She was born in Dublin in 1934 and was raised in County Tipperary. She has published sixteen books to date, including twelve collections of poetry in Irish and English. She is a recipient of the Oireachtas Prize. Her poetry is included in The Great Book of Ireland, and The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. She has been shortlisted for Medea's Cauldron (Arlen House).
, Dublin born, was the second-prize winner in the 2022 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition and was shortlisted in the 2021 Bridport Poetry Prize and in the 2018 Hennessy Literary Awards for Emerging Poetry. He taught in St Eunan’s College for thirty-three years, holds a doctor of philosophy in living educational theory from the University of Bath. He is shortlisted for The Weather-Beaten Scarecrow (Doire Press).
was born in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh. His poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, and his debut collection, Notions, was published by Dedalus Press in 2018. A novel, From Out of The City, was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Bord Gáis Book Awards, and a radio play, The Pipes, was broadcast by RTÉ́. He lives in Dublin where he works in broadcasting. He has been shortlisted for Space (Dedalus Press).
is the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of several books of poetry and prose. A winner of the Hennessy Prize for Irish Literature, he is a poet, and novelist, and Professor of Creative Writing at University College Dublin where he directs the Creative Writing Programme. A former Michener Fellow at the University of Miami, Cambor Fellow at the University of Houston, and Vice Chancellor Research Scholar at the University of Ulster. His several books of poetry include Gunpowder Valentine: New and Selected Poems, Blindsight and Jamais Vu (Salmon Publishing) for which he has been shortlisted.
grew up in Lismore, County Waterford, and graduated in 2019 with an MA in Creative Writing from University College Cork. She works as a Marketing and Development Officer for Graffiti Theatre, Cork. She has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, The Irish Times, Mslexia and The Stinging Fly and has been chosen for Poetry Ireland’s Introductions series. She was recently awarded an Arts Council Literature Bursary. She has been shortlisted for Raised Among Vultures (The Gallery Press).
was born in London in 1968 and has lived in Ireland for more than 30 years. Nature, spirit of place and ecological concerns have been large themes in her writing since the publication of her debut children’s novel Gyrfalcon in 2002, an International White Ravens Choice. She has published three collections of poems, all with the Dedalus Press. When God has been Called Away to Greater Things (2010), winner of the Rupert and Eithne Strong Award for Best First Collection, and Fur (2015), both from the Dedalus Press. Wells has been nominated for The Church of the Love of the World (Dedalus Press),
