Listings for Books of the Year 2025. Titles from The Gallery Press that have been mentioned (so far…):
New Selected Poems – Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
“This year New Selected Poems by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin traverses decades of her remarkable work, confirming her as one of Ireland’s finest poets. Eight new poems also grace the final pages, energised with that same mysterious force which first drew readers to her poetry. Her poems remain startling as the archangel’s question in the last poem: “what is it really like / having a body, having to live inside it?’”
— Enda Wyley, The Irish Times, Best Books
The Map of the World – Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
David Starkey of the California Review of Books has named the U.S. edition of The Map of the World by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, published by Wake Forest University Press (original edition by The Gallery Press), as one of the best poetry books of 2025! ✨
‘Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin rarely disappoints. Her work hums with the rhythm and music and wit of the best Irish poetry in English, though there is something a little sharp and bitter that makes Ní Chuilleanáin’s work distinct. The poems’ subjects are diverse. There is Milton hearing Mozart on a mountain in the underworld: he “climbed wearily on the corpse of Cromwell / to emerge in a greying dawn.” Noah builds his ark in the face of impending environmental catastrophe: “staring everywhere at once / like a wild thing cornered, even though for ages / all around him there has been nothing but the flood.” The poet arrives in Italy during the pandemic, where the taxi-driver overcharges her, and the people at the hotel, she tells us, “remember me / but also, as before think I am German—because of my hair?” Three of the poems are in Irish, though I was able to translate them using my phone. Even in the shaky shorthand of Google Translate, the poems were pretty good—perhaps the ultimate accolade for a twenty-first century poet.’
Hymn to All the Restless Girls – Annemarie Ní Churreáin
‘Inspired by so-called “troublemakers” — from well-known names in Irish life like Sinead O’Connor, Bridget Cleary and Annie Murphy, as well as her own grandmother -— Annemarie Ní Churreáin’s latest collection of poetry takes a decidedly feminist slant. The Donegal poet refuses to pull her punches when it comes to interrogating institutions like the Catholic Church and the Irish State in their historical ill-treatment of women, weaving folkloric and spiritual imagery alongside poems about rebellious women and real-life injustices like the Mother and Baby homes. A powerful collection.
— Lauren Murphy, RTÉ Culture
‘In Hymn to All the Restless Girls, Annemarie Ni Churreáin’s passionate folklore-lit voice is grounded and strengthened in its encounter with the cold, dry records of the Donegal County Archives. These poems burn exhilarating life into a terrible history.’
— Martina Evans, The Irish Times Best Poetry Books of 2025
‘New poetry collections that stood out for me were: Hymn To All The Restless Girls by Annemarie Ní Churreáin (Gallery Press) [among others]
— Brian Kirk, The Lonely Crowd, Books of the Year
Ship in Full Sail – Colm Tóibín
In The Irish Times’ Books of the Year Colm Tóibín’s Ship in Full Sail is singled out by Fintan O’Toole and Joseph O’Connor. A perfect book to delve into over Christmas for friends and family.
‘Colm Tóibín’s Ship in Full Sail brings together his marvellous formal lectures as Laureate for Irish Fiction with the looser, delightfully discursive blogs he published as part of the same gig, mapping encounters with works of poetry, music and visual art and with places and people.’ — Fintan O’Toole
‘With brilliant essays on subjects from Bob Dylan to Eileen Gray, Irish censuses and Wexford light, Colm Tóibín’s Ship in Full Sail is endlessly fascinating and enjoyable.’ — Joseph O’Connor
The book that has given me the greatest pleasure this year is Colm Tóibín’s masterful Ship in Full Sail (Gallery Books €16.95). It is more than mere essays, it is a work of Belles Lettres. While he was Irish Laureate for Fiction Tóibín wrote an essay a month for three years. Here they are, wise, insightful, provocative, learnèd. Fr O’Sullivan SJ, Paul Funge, Tim Robinson, Eileen Gray, Thomas Kilroy, George Clancy and Cathal Brugha, all parade across these pages. And places, Enniscorthy, San Francisco, Barcelona, come to life with ravishing strength. Tóibín inserts high doses of the most astonishing insights, such as this seemingly casual remark upon Borges in the Shelbourne: ‘He marvelled at the idea that Shakespeare wrote:’ ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on’ rather than ‘made of’. Such a Pearl dropped into 2025 a book of exact moments. — Thomas McCarthy, The Irish Catholic
‘Colm Tóibín’s Ship in Full Sail (Gallery) is full of endless riches, looking at everything from opera to Irish folksong, Bob Dylan to Ivor Browne.’ — Joseph O’Connor, Sunday Independent Best Books of 2025
‘I also really enjoyed Colm Tóibín’s Ship in Full Sail. Given my own Wexford roots, the essays which refer to his beloved Enniscorthy resonated with me in particular.’ — Eoin Devereux, Sunday Independent Best Books of 2025
Infinity Pool – Vona Groarke
Vona Groarke’s glittering ninth collection, Infinity Pool, is a luminous, stately book. Groarke’s poems have a plain-spoken appeal, but their depths are deceptive and seem to go on forever. “Here I am open, riddled with light.” Note perfect.
— Mícheál McCann, The Irish Times Best Poetry Books of 2025
Chic to be Sad – Molly Twomey
The young poet, originally from Lismore, Co Waterford and now living in Cork, already has a raft of accolades to her name. In her second collection, she continues to write honestly and fearlessly on topics from the housing crisis to the destruction of her family home in a fire.
— Irish Examiner, Books of the Year
Molly Twomey’s Chic to be Sad builds on the promise of her first collection, Raised Among Vultures.
— Julian Girdham, The Fortnightly
Fallen
– Audrey Molloy
Further in her career and life is Audrey Molloy, whose third collection, Fallen, is excellent.
— Julian Girdham, The Fortnightly
