Dean Browne was announced as the winner for After Party, published by Picador, during the Award Night readings in the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast on Monday 22 June 2026.  

Dean Browne is from Co. Tipperary and lives in Cork. He received the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2021 and his pamphlet, Kitchens at Night, was a winner of the Poetry Business International Pamphlet Competition; it was published by Smith|Doorstop in 2022. His poems have appeared in The London Magazine, New York Review of Books, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, and elsewhere. After Party is his debut collection.

Speaking about the award, Dean Browne said: “I was lucky enough to receive an encouraging letter from Seamus Heaney as a teenager in response to one I’d written him. The magnanimity of that gesture meant a lot to me then, for its kind perceptiveness and wisdom, and I’m extremely grateful to be recognised with this award for my first collection now — it is a very meaningful honour. Thanks to my brilliant fellow nominees and to the judges at the Seamus Heaney Centre. That the three judges are poets I admire makes it all the more special. I guess the only thing to do now is let it go to my head.” 

This year’s judges were Leontia Flynn, Nick Laird and Karen Solie. Speaking about the winning collection, Professor Nick Laird said: “We liked the imagination in After Party, the sense of voice and surprise, the sensibility and variety of forms. We admired how the poems created a feeling of a perception of place in time triggered by a detail or idea, while attending to line, music, and structure, and how the poems, like spells, invoked weird parallel worlds. It’s a worthy winner.’’

The audience heard from all shortlisted collections at the award night, as part of the Seamus Heaney Poetry Summer School. Each collection was introduced by a student critic. The event took place at the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast, supported by No Alibis Bookstore. 

The 2026 Shortlist included: 

• Chaotic Good by Isabelle Baafi (Faber)
• After Party by Dean Browne (Picador)
• Joy Is My Middle Name by Sasha Debvec-McKenny (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
• Heirloom by Catherine-Esther Cowie (Carcanet Press)
• The Storm’s Flora by Laura Wainwright (Seren)

The Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize is awarded annually to a writer whose first full collection has been published in the preceding year, by a UK or Ireland-based publisher. The winning writer receives £5,000 and is invited to participate in the Seamus Heaney Centre’s busy calendar of literary events.