Cathy Galvin's Ethnology shortlisted for The Laurel Prize 2026
Cornwall-based Irish poet Cathy Galvin's first full-length book of poetry, Ethnology: a love song for Connemara, has been shortlisted for The Laurel Prize 2026. The five-strong shortlist was announced on the Laurel Prize website and social media channels today, Friday 14 August 2026.
The other four shortlisted entries are: Midden Witch by Fiona Benson (Jonathan Cape), Natural History by Brandon Kilbourne (Graywolf Press), Tipping Point by Jane Lovell (Night River Wood), and The Storm’s Flora by Laura Wainwright (Seren Books).
The Judges for 2026 are poets David Morley (Chair) and Imtiaz Dharker, along with environmentalist Bethan Laughlin. They commented:
'The shortlist grew out of a warm, lively and wonderfully engaged conversation among the judges, guided by the parameters set by the Poet Laureate. We read poems aloud to each other, hearing them come alive in the room, and above all we wanted poems with real power, poems that surprised us, moved us and made us see the world differently. The environmental and climate emergency formed an important backdrop, but what mattered was what the poets did with it, transforming subject into language, imagination and art. At their best, these poems bring together the art of nature and the nature of art, reminding us that the way we imagine the living world can change the way we live in it.' – David Morley
'Reading these poems over months, I felt the focus and urgency in collection after collection. The poets have not just honoured the subject matter, but marshalled language and form to find their own ways to speak of threatened ecologies and fragile social structures. We came to a shortlist at last but I have to say there were gems on our longlists that were hard to let go, all the more evidence of how vibrant poetry is, and how it steps up to speak for the world.' – Imtiaz Dharker
'This shortlist gathers five collections that speak to the natural world through vastly different styles, methods and vantage points, yet each refuses to treat nature – or our attempts to use and control it – as something to be remarked upon from afar. At a time when connecting people with the natural world has never been more important, I believe these poems work to close the artificial distance we so often create between “human” and “nature”, instead making the living world something we are held inside of, answerable to, altered by, and utterly part of.' – Bethan Laughlin
The prize awards £5,000 for the winner and £1,000 for the other four finalists. The winner will be announced at The Laurel Prize Ceremony, which is being held on Friday 25 September, 7pm, at the BBC Philharmonic Studio, MediaCity, Salford, as part of the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival 2026.
For this year’s ceremony there will be a panel discussion led by poet Helen Mort, which will then lead into judges’ comments and the announcement of the winner. This panel will provide the shortlisted poets the opportunity to read two of their poems and discuss the themes and ideas behind them ahead of the winner being announced.
More information about the Laurel Prize and the shortlist can be found on their website: https://laurelprize.com/2026-shortlist/
The Laurel Prize is UK Poet Laureate's annual nature and ecopoetry prize. It is funded by his Laureate’s honorarium, which he receives annually from the King, and is run by the Poetry School. It is awarded to what the judges consider the best collection of environmental or nature poetry published in the past year. The winner of The Laurel Prize 2025 was Katrina Porteous for her fourth collection Rhizodont (2024). In 2023, Yvonne Reddick won The Laurel Prize for Best UK First Collection for her debut Burning Season. The inaugural Laurel Prize was won by Pascale Petit in 2020 for her seventh collection Mama Amazonica.
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Cathy Galvin is a poet and a journalist, and has been a champion of other writers and writing, co-founding The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award and founding and directing The Word Factory short story organisation. She has been nominated for a variety of awards including the Ilkley Poetry Prize and Listowel Poetry Prize and is the recipient of a Hawthornden Fellowship, Heinrich Böll (Achill Island) residency and an Arts Council England DYCP award. Her first full-length book of poetry, Ethnology: a love song for Connemara (February 2026), follows three pamphlet sequences of poetry, Black & Blue (Melos Press, 2014), Rough Translation (Melos Press, 2016) and Walking The Coventry Ring Road with Lady Godiva (Guillemot Press, 2019). Ethnology: a love song for Connemara was longlisted for the 2026 Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection (one of the Forward Prizes) and is on the shortlist for The Laurel Prize 2026.
With roots in Coventry and Connemara, Cathy Galvin now lives near Bodmin Moor in Cornwall.
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'Cathy Galvin's rich, complex Ethnology: A Love Song for Connemara is a history of Galvin's mother's native Mason Island and a tremendous elegy for her son whose heart is buried there [...] It is also a burning lyrical investigation into the power of language and those who use that power. Ethnology refers to the 'elites' - visitors such as folklorists or the ethnographer Charles R Browne, who as well as attempting to steal skulls from Inisboffin, measured the heads of islanders. [...] Galvin acknowledges the paradox that Ethnology owes as much to the elites' recordings as it does to the Irish language and her upbringing within an Irish family in England. [...] Galvin is verbally adept, a master of many forms, but perhaps it is the further paradox of being so close to a language she didn't understand as a child that creates this hungry, groundbreaking book, brimming with grief and desire'...' – Martina Evans, The Irish Times
'A four part collection which is a paean to the West of Ireland, specifically Másiun Island, the home of the poet's maternal ancestors. In a sweeping enquiry into lineage, landscape and the wounds left by colonisation, Galvin takes the family cottage she has inherited, now derelict, as a focus for memory and ghosts. [...] The epigraph, Nì bás, ach fás ('Not death but growth') reflects the often numinous quality of Galvin's writing at its best, where suffering, the desire to reabsorb that which is gone, often through intensely physical language, gestures towards transcendence, a wished-for coming home...' – Theresa Sowerby, Orbis
‘Ethnology: a love song for Connemara is a tightly focused book. It pursues its themes with a laser-like precision. But Galvin’s world never feels monolithic. For all its emphasis on loss of both people and place, there lies beneath that an abundant sense of life, its meaning and its worth. This is, as the cliché often suggests, a book to return to, a book with real heft and stature.’ – Ian Pople, London Grip
‘…a collection that is rooted in the landscape and nuances of Máisean Island and its past inhabitants. Galvin also questions what home and belonging mean when family roots have left their point of origin.’ – Emma Lee, The High Window
PRESS INTERVIEW WITH CATHY GALVIN
Galway City Tribune / Connacht Tribune, 15 May 2026
An interview with Devon-based Irish poet Cathy Galvin was featured as a double page spread in both the Galway City Tribune and the Connacht Tribune of 15 May 2026, illustrated with a photo of Cathy pictured in the ruined cottage she inherited on Mason Island, off the coast of Connemara.
Read online here.
INTERVIEWS WITH CATHY GALVIN ON IRISH RADIO & PODCASTS
Irish with Mollie, Episode 44: Cathy Galvin, 11 May 2026
An in-depth interview with Cathy Galvin featured on Episode 44 of the Irish with Mollie podcast on 11 May 2026. Cathy was speaking with host Mollie Guidera about her first full-length poetry book Ethnology: a love song for Connemara. Cathy read the first three sections of her sequence ‘Na Ceachtanna: Lessons’, followed by the short poems ‘An Ghaeltacht’, ‘Saint’s Toolkit’, and her long poem ‘Adúirt mo Mhamó Arís’, which is in the voice of her grandmother. She also spoke about her poem ‘Coventry Carol’.
Listen here.
Books for Breakfast, 2 April 2026
An interview with Cathy Galvin featured on the Books for Breakfast podcast of 2 April 2026. This was recorded at and before the Hodges Figgis Dublin launch of her first full-length poetry book Ethnology: a love song for Connemara. The episode began with a recording of host Enda Wyley’s introduction at the launch.The section with Cathy Galvin began with her reading of the title poem ‘Ethnology’, recorded at the launch. She also read ‘Choosing What to Say to Dr Hyde’, the second part of her sequence ‘Mythology’ from Book Three: Love Songs of Connacht. She ended by reading section III of her sequence ‘After’ about the loss of her son.
Cathy Galvin was interviewed by hosts Enda Wylie and Peter Sirr. She spoke about her experience of travelling from Coventry to visit her family on Mason Island as a child, listening to the Irish language around her. She also talked about the historical background to the book.
John F Deane introduces Ethnology at 7:40. Cathy features from 15:50. Listen here.
Arena, RTÉ Radio 1, 5 March 2026
Cathy Galvin was interviewed live down the line from Cornwall on RTÉ Radio 1’s Arena on 5 March 2026 ahead of her Dublin launch on 24 March. She was discussing her debut poetry book Ethnology: a love song for Connemara with host Rick O’Shea. She read her poems ‘Ethnology’ and ‘Choosing what to say to Dr Hyde’, part 2 of the sequence ‘Mythology’.
A separate podcast of Cathy Galvin's interview is here.
ARTICLE BY CATHY GALVIN IN THE TABLET
The Tablet, Saturday 7 March 2026
An article by poet and journalist Cathy Galvin featured in The Tablet of 7 March 2026. She was writing about her first full-length poetry book Ethnology: a love song for Connemara, focusing on the historical and family background to the book. The piece was illustrated with a colour photo of Cathy Galvin pictured in the ruined cottage she inherited on Mason Island off the coast of Connemara, and was accompanied by her poem ‘Ethnology’.
‘A love song for Connemara: A writer has used poetry to reclaim what has been lost to her across borders of language, culture and understanding.’
The article is available online here (register to read for free).
Cathy Galvin reads from Ethnology at the Ledbury Poetry Festival
Cathy Galvin read from her Bloodaxe collection Ethnology: a love song for Connemara at Ledbury Poetry Festival on 3 July 2026 in an event shared with Annemarie Ní Churreáin, who read from her Gallery Press collection Hymn to All the Restless Girls.
ONLINE LAUNCH EVENT
Tuesday 24 February 2026, online launch reading by Polly Clark, Cathy Galvin and Penelope Shuttle
Bloodaxe's joint online launch event for new February 2026 titles by Polly Clark, Cathy Galvin and Penelope Shuttle is now on YouTube. All three poets were celebrating the publication of their new books by reading live and discussing their work with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley.
This free Bloodaxe launch event was streamed on YouTube Live and is now available on this YouTube page: https://youtube.com/live/XA38CZZs9yE.
Excellent readings by all three poets, followed by a very lively discussion. Cathy Galvin reads second in each set.
[14 August 2026]
