Thomas McCarthy

Thomas McCarthy was born in Cappoquin, Waterford in 1954 where he was educated at the local Convent of Mercy and subsequently at University College Cork. He worked for many years at Cork City Libraries. He has won many awards for his poetry, including The Patrick Kavanagh Award, the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize, the O’Shaughnessy Prize and the Ireland Funds Annual Literary Award. His first collection, The First Convention, was published by The Dolmen Press, Dublin, in 1978 and his tenth collection, Prophecy, was published by Carcanet Press in 2019. A former Editor of Poetry Ireland Review and The Cork Review, his journals, Memory, Poetry and the Party, were published by The Gallery Press in 2022 and his essays, Questioning Ireland, appeared in 2024. Thomas’ new collection Plenitude was published by Carcanet in March 2025.