Audrey Molloy
In this striking, moving, bold debut, Audrey Molloy’s poems move between Ireland and Australia, parenthood and daughterhood, and the sensual worlds of the body, its attendant desires and intensities. Beyond these essential forces, The Important Things, in all its formal elegance, is a book of grief too. Its second part stuns with tenderness. — Stephen Sexton, Poetry Prize Judge, 2022 Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize for a First collection for The Important Things
Audrey Molloy was born in Dublin and grew up in Blackwater, County Wexford. She has a masters degree in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Manchester Metropolitan University.
Southword Editions published a chapbook, Satyress, in 2020, the year after she received the Hennessy Award for Emerging Poetry and the An Post Irish Book Award for Irish Poem of the Year.
Her debut collection, The Important Things (2021) was shortlisted for the 2022 Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize and won the Anne Elder Award. She lives in Sydney with her husband and three children.
The Important Things
‘I blame Madonna’ is the arresting opening of one of the poems in Audrey Molloy’s remarkable and distinctive first collection. 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. This is a woman’s tale reported in feisty, sensual and beautiful poetry.
