In cinematic clarity 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 gumtrees in her adopted home where plants are often not what they seem: ‘You are my ocean — / blue cocktail of salt and sediment — / but you are not my leaf.’ While exploring ‘a closer understanding of what it means / to be a woman’ she displays a constant consciousness of the body and its desires. 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. In a dazzling variety of forms here are poems alert to imagination and alive to language itself. If The Important Things was a book of promise The Blue Cocktail demonstrates that guarantee has been honoured.
‘Audrey Molloy’s curious sensuality makes even the difficult moments deeply pleasurable.’ — Martina Evans, The Irish Times
