The Poems of Dorothy Molloy

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Dorothy Molloy was a star in the making when Faber prepared her debut Hare Soup (2004) for publication, before tragedy struck, and she died four days before advance copies arrived. With its distinctive and unsettling mix of comedy and complicity, dark humour and disturbance (a feminist burlesque that has seen her work christened as 'gurlesque'), Hare Soup stripped the veneer from the niceties of relations in family life and the Catholic church, turning its inventive and sexually charged gaze to corruption and abuse in our most private spaces. The book rightly won accolades and admirers, and was followed by a further, posthumous collection, Gethsemane Day (2006) that was prepared from typescript. The Poems of Dorothy Molloy gathers these two collections alongside her manuscript work, which appeared as Long-Distance Swimmer (Salmon, 2009), and the remaining body of unpublished material to present a complete edition of poems to meet the growing readership of this startling talent.

Reviews

"Just occasionally, a new collection of poetry appears that makes you recalibrate your scale of judgement, makes you realise that what you had counted as good was merely mediocre. Such a work is Hare Soup by Dorothy Molloy." -- New Statesman on Hare Soup
"Slippage between the quotidian and the nightmarish is characteristic of Molloy's poetry, which throughout this new collected volume is rooted in the visceral pains and pleasures of human experience, even as it is chimerical and outlandish in its imagery." -- Times Literary Supplement

"The Poems of Dorothy Molloy rescues jewels that would otherwise be lost and complements the wonderful - as in full-of-wonder - work included in the first three volumes. Ultimately, this new book brings her back to us. Her voice still audible. Her vision still relevant." -- Irish Times

Author Bio

Dorothy Molloy was born in Ballina, County Mayo, and grew up in County Dublin. She studied languages at University College Dublin, before going to Barcelona where she worked as a historical researcher and painter. She lived in County Dublin with her husband, and died in 2004.