Kavanagh Poetry Award 2025 – Winner Announcement

The Patrick Kavanagh Society in association with the Patrick Kavanagh Centre are delighted to announce this year’s recipient of the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award is Róisín Leggett Bohan

Róisín Leggett Bohan is a writer from Cork who has been shortlisted for The Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize and Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. Her work features in Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, The Manchester Review, Banshee, The Pomegranate London, RTE Radio 1, and elsewhere. Several of her poems appear in Beginnings Over and Over: Four New Poets from Ireland (Dedalus Press, 2025) and her poem ‘We Carried May’ was showcased nationally by Poetry Ireland for Poetry Day 2025. Róisín was awarded a literature bursary from The Arts Council, is a UCC graduate, and co-founder of HOWL New Irish Writing.

The Patrick Kavanagh Poetry award, which includes €2000 for the recipient, is given to a poet who has yet to publish a full collection. It has marked the beginning of the careers of many of Ireland’s leading contemporary poets, including Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Paul Durcan and Sinéad Morrisey. The winner in 2024 was Simon Costello.

This year’s adjudicator was acclaimed poet Victoria Kennefick who described Róisín’s winning collection ‘We Fall, We Carry‘ as “poems of sometimes devastating vulnerability, humour and considerable skill with an intelligent point-of-view that is all Leggett Bohan’s own“.  A very worthy winner.  Victoria also commended the overall quality of this year’s submissions praising the two Runners Up ‘Too Much’ by Finola Cahill and ‘pb’ by Alexander Donnan.  Aside from these a further 10 submissions were Highly Commended.

A selection of the poems from each of the winner, runners up and highly commended are included in the second edition of ‘The Monsters Back‘ now available to purchase from the Patrick Kavanagh Centre and online.

Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2025

Winner
Róisín Leggett Bohan for her collection ‘We Fall, We Carry‘

Runners Up
Finola Cahill, ‘Too Much‘
Alexander Donnan, ‘pb‘

Highly Commended
Charlotte Buckley, ‘Spectacular Protest‘
Daragh Byrne, ‘The News‘
Derval Tubridy, ‘I Will Say That‘
Derville Quigley, ‘Placeholder‘
Jennifer Herron, ‘The Woman Who Lived In a Cave’
Joanne McCarthy, ‘All Your Shiny Braces‘
Maresa Sheehan, ‘Turning Fifty‘
Martina Dalton, ‘The Black Valley‘
Natasha Kinsella, ‘Shame Has a Syntax‘
Susanna Galbraith, ‘And The Sky Ate Your Name‘