Awards

Woman walking barefoot along seashore

 

Judges’ comments

Audrey Molloy’s ‘Cold Water Swimming in Lyme Regis’ is a poem of gorgeous language and image. Written in conversation with John Fowles’s novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman, this is deeply lyrical poem conjures the gasp of that plunge into cold water, taking the reader from the ‘flounce of dulse and tangle’ of entry to water to the ‘briny spangles’ of the poem’s end.

 — Kate Middleton, Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, 2025

 

‘Notes from a Room’ is an elegant, finely achieved sestina that expertly wields the form’s complexity to achieve subtle, condensed effects in a poem that explores the way music resonates and carries through walls and time. Beginning with a domestic and interior scene, the poem expands into a moment of tangential connection with the outside world through its ‘perfect hum’ of images and sound.

— Sarah Holland-Batt, Paul Kane & Peter Rose, Peter Porter Poetry Prize, 2025

 

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, 2022 Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize for a First collection

 

‘There is a rebellious, subtle wit in this collection, matched by the poet’s capacity for evocative and moving vulnerability. Molloy’s surprising, elegant poems explore intimacy, domesticity and grief, and as she navigates this complex terrain her voice remains assured, self-aware and charismatic. 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. Though a highly personal collection, we see ourselves reflected in the poems and bear testament to the adjacency of loss and grief with re-discovery of joy and pleasure.

In a strong field, this collection impresses in many ways, including its very pleasing use of language, image and analogy. In turns playful, measured and intimate, it demonstrates excellent control of cadence, meter and rhythm.’

— Ella Jeffery, Marjon Mossammaparast, & Marcella Polain, 2021 Anne Elder Award

 

‘Prose poetry is where poetry and short fiction meet, melt into each other and take on surprising shapes. ‘On Reaching 45 the Poet Realises She Is Only 23’ is a perfect example, its enjambed verse sentences stretching into a transformation that morphs folklore into psychological lyric, with a bagful of sharp knives and a trickster’s wink. With its hairy paws straddling Russell Edson and Angela Carter, the poem is its own beast.’

— Oz Hardwick, 2019 Aesthetica Creative Writing Award

 

‘Mother, I am Your Mother Now emerged as the most assured and deeply affecting of the parental elegies among this year’s entries. A prose poem in eight sections, it begins in the womb – “as jellyfish, velvet worm, nautilus” – and moves by turns through understated, pitch-perfect snapshots of motherhood and suburban domesticity, to the final gut-wrenching phone call with the speaker’s mother on her deathbed. While a prose poem, there is nothing prosaic about its astute balance of rich and relaxed diction, and its hard-won insight and wisdom.’

— Judy Johnson & Jaya Savige, 2019 Newcastle Poetry Prize

 

‘Audrey Molloy has a direct, engaging style and a gift for powerful images. She has a distinctive voice – ranging from laconic and feral to sardonic and knowing.’

— Magma Editors, 2018 Magma Open Pamphlet Competition

 

‘Three versions of a similar event reimagined from different attitudes in this earnest yet fun-packed postmodern poem in the voice of an implied fortune-teller. The most exciting element of the poem for me was the sestina style embedded in the prose form, with certain words being repeated in each section. The surface play discloses and obscures as it pleases, so rather than focus on a strong narrative I looked forward to the ways in which words such as ‘Hank’s’ and ‘Walt’s’, from the TV drama Breaking Bad, become ‘hanky’ and ‘waltz’, or the way ‘kleptomaniac’ and ‘Sancerre’ took on a new relevance.’

— Daljit Nagra, 2017 The Moth Poetry Prize

 

‘Languages I learned in Hell’ by Audrey Molloy ingeniously shows how the conceptual idea of a series of lists of words, phrases and acronyms can offer narrative and emotional insight into loss, the absurdities of modern life and language, and simply getting on with it. Her lists come from the vocabularies of medicine, law, managerialism, even IKEA-speak, covering everything from ‘tussy mussy’ to ‘pre-marital assets’, ‘foetal demise’ to ‘friends with benefits’, along with an ‘allen key’. This is adroit, sharp and affecting all at once.’

— Toby Fitch & Jill Jones, 2016 Judith Wright Prize for Emerging Poets

 

‘The First Prize winning poem “True Colours” by Audrey Molloy immediately engaged, with its sparking diction and dialogue. Lines such as “loose skin/a catalogue of blue leaks from within” and “like windows to a sea inside you” employ brilliant imagery, and the use of the central metaphors of light and water are tightly sewn throughout. Equally exact is the use of rhyme, aabb for each stanza, but impeccably woven so as not to draw attention. The mixture of humour and wisdom truly creates the picture of this “grey man” – a superb piece of writing and thoroughly deserving of top honours.’

— Kevin Gillam, 2017 Poetry d’Amour Love Poetry Contest

 

‘Audrey Molloy’s varied and emotive collection focuses on mother-daughter relationships and skillfully explores the many dimensions of female experience and the life of the body. Along with moving poems about the ambiguous influence of institutional religion on children, the experience of depression, loss, and love, comes light-hearted satire on the trials of parenthood and growing up.’

— Vivian Smith, Jane Gibian, & Elizabeth Allen, Noel Rowe Poetry Award 2017-18

 

‘Audrey Molloy’s ‘Symphony of Skin’ skillfully extends the metaphor from the body (‘timpani buttoned under a cashier’s blouse’) to lovers and ‘the music of skin.’

— Maggie Smith, The Best New British and Irish Poets 2018

 

‘This poem, by Hennessy Emerging Poetry award winner Audrey Molloy, is superb. In years to come I’ve no doubt it will be studied alongside this stunning 2017 winning poem by Una Mannion.  Compare and contrast.’

— Martin Doyle, The Irish Times, on At the Shell Midden