Reviews
‘Resonant and luminous, Audrey Molloy’s The Blue Cocktail considers bodies and their politics beside bodies of water, home and abroad, “where the water is brackish,/not one thing nor another – the emigrant’s curse”’.
– Stephen Sexton, 2023 Books of the Year, The Irish Times
‘Themes are impressively interwoven, linking water and continents to nativity and womanhood. These poems are elegantly dressed and convivial . . . A quickening, intercontinental book.’
– Stephen Sexton, The Irish Times, about The Blue Cocktail
‘In Ordinary Time, two poets explore what it means to take on ‘the shape of curiosity’, the ‘prismatic’ truth of things. Then they allow us to eavesdrop. Delightful. Written in a form that evokes unsteady pillars but also the sudden sight of a murmuration, these poems range far but always bring us home.’
– Helen Mort, author of The Illustrated Woman (Chatto & Windus, 2022, shortlisted for the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection)
‘Anthony Lawrence and Audrey Molloy’s collaborative work Ordinary Time, (Pitt Street Poets, 12/22), is a remarkable confluence of imaginations that takes the reader into a hallucinatory search for self and home. The book is more than just the sum of alternating poems: it’s a poetic bond of unforgettable power.’
– Judith Beveridge, author of Sun Music (Giramondo, 2018) writing in the Australian Book Review: Books of the Year 2022
‘The precise nature of the exchange that builds in Ordinary Time is hard to define. It is playful and deadly serious, a dialogue of two professional practitioners of poetry, one that is also intensely personal.’
– Rose Lucas, author of Increments of the Everyday (Puncher and Wattmann, 2022). Extract from review in the Australian Book Review
‘Though the topics touched on range widely, the poems [in Ordinary Time] tend to generate a composite poetic personality, somewhat reminiscent of the chameleonic Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa. The result certainly upsets easy preconceptions about “male” and “female” writing – and, for that matter, established conceptions of the poets’ previous work. There is a loose narrative to do with time-travel but mainly Ordinary Time is lyrical poetry freed from its “normal” expectations and limitations.’
– Geoff Page, author of 101 Poems 2011-2021 (Pitt Street Poetry, 2022). Extract from review in the Canberra Times: Are we still in Australian poetry’s ‘golden age’?
Time travelling is what poets do. They take in what is past, or passing, or to come, as Yeats had it. These two poets embark on fantasy-driven voyages, prompting in each other both similarities and differences of memory and experience, especially when their imaginary Time Machine lands. They enrich each other with their recollections and fancies and their often amazing imagery.
– Nigel Jarrett, author of Miners at the Quarry Pool (Parthian, 2013). Extract from review in the Acumen, Issue 106.
Interviews
Interview with Seán Rocks on RTE Arena
About
Audrey Molloy grew up in Ireland and has lived in Sydney since 1998. Her debut collection, The Important Things (The Gallery Press, 2021) received the Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize. Ordinary Time, a collaboration with Australian poet Anthony Lawrence, was published by Pitt Street Poetry in 2022 and was one of Australian Book Review’s ‘Books of the Year 2022’. Audrey has an MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Manchester Metropolitan University. She was shortlisted for the Red Room Fellowship in 2022 and has previously been awarded a Varuna Residential Fellowship. Her poetry has appeared in Best of Australian Poems, Australian Poetry Anthology, Island, Meanjin, Cordite, Overland and The Weekend Australian.
‘This mature and grounded voice, unafraid to expose the fragility and vulnerability that come with life’s experiences, is suffused with human warmth that connects with and engages the reader.’ – Ella Jeffery, Marjon Mossammaparast, and Marcella Polain, 2021 Anne Elder Award
