Kavanagh Poetry Award 2026 – 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 Paul McMahon.
From Belfast, Paul McMahon’s chapbook, Bourdon, was published by Southword Editions. Paul was awarded The Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize by Carol Ann Duffy. Other poetry awards include first prizes in The Moth International, The Fingal, The Plaza, The Westival, The Nottingham, The Gloucester, The Golden Pen, and The Listowel Writers’ Week Poetry Collection Prize. His poems have appeared in Poetry Review, Poetry News, Rialto, London Magazine, Threepenny Review, Southword, Irish Times, Stinging Fly, Best New British and Irish Poets, and elsewhere.
Website: https://www.paul-mcmahon.com/
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 2025 was Róisín Leggett Bohan.
This year’s adjudicator was acclaimed poet Victoria Kennefick who had this to say about this year’s winner. ‘McMahon is a gifted poet whose work continues that of Kavanagh’s in singing to the everyday, while creating a form, language and point-of-view that is wise, compassionate, deeply spiritual and utterly original’ Victoria also commended the overall quality of this year’s submissions praising the two runners up ‘There Doesn’t Have To Be A Theory Of Everything’ by Noel Howley and ‘Fallout’ by Eamonn O’Sullivan. 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 third edition of ‘The Monsters Back ‘, now available to purchase from the Patrick Kavanagh Centre and online.
Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2026
Winner
Paul McMahon for his collection ‘The Year I Painted the Humber Bridge ‘
Runners Up
Noel Howley, ‘There Doesn’t Have To Be A Theory Of Everything ‘
Eamonn O’Sullivan, ‘Fallout ‘
Highly Commended
Finola Cahill, ‘Improbably Night ‘
Alexander Donnan, ‘PB‘
Ger Duffy, ‘Bromide Lullabies‘
Olivia Heggarty, ‘Pommes’
Lorraine McArdle, ‘Where the Women Go‘
Lorraine McArdle, ‘Family, Interrupted’
Paul McCarrick, ‘Monument‘
Zara Meadows, ‘The Standard‘
Órfhlaith Nic Airt, ‘A Sort of Starvation‘
Niamh O’Connell, ‘A Self-Imposed Recommunication‘
