Some students gain comfort from analysing the poets that have come up in the past. Here is a quick overview of the last few years:
2015
John Montague
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
Robert Frost
Thomas Hardy
2014
W.B. Yeats
Emily Dickinson
Philip Larkin
Sylvia Plath
2013
Elizabeth Bishop
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Derek Mahon
Sylvia Plath
2012
Thomas Kinsella
Adrienne Rich
Philip Larkin
Patrick Kavanagh
2011
Emily Dickinson
W.B. Yeats
Robert Frost
Eavan Boland
2010
W.B. Yeats
Adrienne Rich
Patrick Kavanagh
T.S. Eliot
2009
Derek Walcott
John Keats
John Montague
Elizabeth Bishop
2008
Philip Larkin
John Donne
Derek Mahon
Adrienne Rich
2007
Robert Frost
T.S. Eliot
John Montague
Sylvia Plath
2006
John Donne
Thomas Hardy
Elizabeth Bishop
Michael Longley
2005
Eavan Boland
Emily Dickinson
T.S. Eliot
W.B. Yeats
2004
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Patrick Kavanagh
Derek Mahon
Sylvia Plath
2003
John Donne
Robert Frost
Sylvia Plath
Seamus Heaney
2002
Elizabeth Bishop
Eavan Boland
Michael Longley
Shakespeare’s Sonnets
2001
Elizabeth Bishop
John Keats
Philip Larkin
Michael Longley