Molly Twomey grew up in Lismore, County Waterford and now lives in Cork. Her first collection, Raised Among Vultures was published in 2022 by The Gallery Press. It was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize for Best First Collection and won the Southword Debut Collection Poetry Award. She was awarded the 2023 Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary and an Arts Council Literature Bursary in 2024. Her second collection, Chic to be Sad, was published in July 2025.
Photographer: Alana Daly Mulligan
. . . grant me the rest I cannot grant myself.
Molly Twomey’s first collection, Raised Among Vultures, touched readers and listeners in uncommon ways. Reviewing it in Poetry Ireland’s Trumpet Annie Brown wrote that it ‘feels like a friend’.
Chic to be Sad continues a young woman’s report from the front lines of experience. These fearless poems, rich in simile (a smile ‘wide / as a long weekend’) and striking detail, rest in ordinary settings — an ‘Online Staff Meeting’, an Aldi car park in Youghal. Framed between work that centres on a fire in her family home this book displays an even wider range than her debut — from ‘My Brother’s Friends Draw Dicks’, ‘The Mechanic Speaks to My Boyfriend Over My Head’ and ‘Why We Don’t Have Kids’ it reaches to the Guggenheim Museum in Venice and considerations of art. There’s a constant sense of the aftermath of illness and the poems never shy from physical and emotional vulnerability. Brave in its honesty and directness, Chic to be Sad confirms a special
gift and presence in Irish poetry before reaching its wise conclusion:
‘There is so much to know, / so much I want you to hear.’
Cover: ‘Just So You Know I Was Thinking of You’ by Niamh Swanton.
‘Twomey is a gifted storyteller, her recovery narrative spiked with keen insight and dark humour as she cautiously observes her ambushing self’
Martina Evans, The Irish Times.
Molly Twomey’s Raised Among Vultures brilliantly negotiates the frontlines of young adulthood – eating disorders, relationships with partners and parents – with a compelling and often disquieting tone, memorable imagery, and a sharp eye for patterning, both poetic and familial. An unapologetic voice carries the reader through poem after poem, and into the world of risk, vulnerability and youth that it recreates fearlessly.
Judges of the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize 23′, Nick Laird, Stephen Sexton, and Leontia Flynn.
My first reading of Raised Among Vultures reminded me that healing will never be linear, and recovery will take a lifetime. My second reading reminded me that I am not alone on this journey, nor will ever be. My third reading inspired me to keep writing, keep reading, and keep going. I am sure the fourth reading will bring with it a new experience, as will every reading after that, because truthfully, I know I will return to this collection again and again.
Annie Browne, Trumpet, Poetry Ireland
Molly Twomey is an exciting early career poet who has taken to heart Ezra Pound’s exhortation to make it new. Her poems force us to look afresh at aspects of the world — a man being massaged as “a bottle of ketchup,” a Coke as “a huge cup of starless sky” — in ways that are quite indelible.
The Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust
. . . a poet for a new Ireland, for a new post-Covid world.
Thomas McCarthy
Molly Twomey 