Cirrus@Austlit

'Audrey Molloy's second collection probes ideas of home across her native Ireland and Australia, where she now lives. The 'pure sheen' of a horse chestnut makes way for the 'minty scent' of gum trees in her adopted home where the sea is reassuringly familiar but plants are often not what they seem:

You are my ocean-

blue cocktail of salt and sediment-

but you are not my leaf.

In a dazzling variety of forms, these poems reflect Molloy's transnational identity as an Irish woman living in Australia and the tension and dialogue that exists between two cultures. One part memory, two parts love letter to the sea, with dashes of longing, sass and a nip of melancholia, The Blue Cocktail is strange, sexy and intoxicating.'(Publication summary)

'‘I blame Madonna’ is the arresting opening of one of the poems in Audrey Molloy’s remarkable and distinctive first collection, The Important Things. In an unusual display of different forms the book resounds with echoes of other writers but is the work of a true original. From ‘What We Learned at Loreto’ to ‘Lockdown Boogie’ it explores the surreal, the dreamt and the down-to-earth everyday in images laced with humour, science and sex. It chronicles the end of a marriage and the discovery of new love and renewed passion. ‘Know you tried’ concludes the book’s opening section. Its second part comprises a sequence of poems that mourn her mother, savour memories and rue missed opportunities. The Important Things is a woman’s tale reported in feisty, sensual and beautiful poetry.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.