In praise of Dorothy Molloy, by Michael Foley

Dorothy Molloy’s poetry is not only compelling in itself but for its vision of a female Ireland struggling out of traditional confinements and desperate to be free but angry, conflicted and haunted. Everything about her work is surprising, beginning with a first collection, Hare Soup, published by Faber in 2004, when she was 62, and her death 10 days before publication. Then there is the mix of realistic detail and fairytale grotesquerie, of sexual candour and religious imagery, and the view of men as boorish, violent abusers which is saved from being a rant by the savage, black humour, as in Ventriloquist’s Dummy:

I burn, turn my face from the crowd

when I feel your thumb press on my gusset,

your falsetto rise in my throat.

Offstage, I gag when you come

on the stumps of my tongue. You project

not a sound through my lips till I action

my jaws, spit your codpiece back into

your lap. Then the roaring begins.

Between us we bring the house down.

Other favourites: Rita Ann Higgins and Colette Bryce.

Michael Foley is a poet, novelist and critic. His books include The Age of Absurdity, The Road to No-town and Getting Used to not being Remarkable