Icarus is the prize-winning poetry collection by Molly Donachie. First Prize winner, Sentinel Poetry Book Competition 2017, this rich, articulate tour de force considers the experience of humankind from the everyday, through the spiritual, the mythical, to popular culture.
About this debut collection by Molly Donachie, Roger Elkin writes: For the main part, the poems in this collection inhabit a world of private and personal events and memories, many of which are written about in epigrammatic structures using freshly-minted and freely-associative imagery. The subject matter centres on intimate moments - small domestic matters such as the significance of a trailing thread, the challenge of running for a bus, the desire of mothers wanting to join in with a game of skipping-rope. This exploration of everydayness with its possibilities, accidents and contradictions is couched in fine detail which reveals the innernesses of things, the otherwise unknown or unperceived. This is particularly so in a series of family poems in which the reader is allowed only a partial glimpse into distant memories and happenings, so for example we don't know the full story of Auntie Feenie's life, but are there to share her resilient fight against authority and her refusal to give in. Exploring more generally-experienced concerns, several poems make reference to Biblical and classical personages and events (Solomon, Achilles, Troy, and Icarus in the imaginatively-perceptive title-poem), or more recent cultural icons (St Therese of Carmel, Marilyn Monroe, and Lech Walesa); and others focus on the worlds of artists (Breughel, van Gogh, Klee, Giacometti, Callum Innes, and Cezanne visiting Pissarro) in which the descriptions of the painter's craft, dedication and insights are used to illustrate and illuminate the everyday. Of the poems using the natural world as backcloth for the human dilemma, two deserve particular mention. In Moon Halo, the effective description of the halo-ed moon widens to make reference to the nativity of Christ, "a halo-ed babe," and then expands to an all-embracing concern of mothers for their new-born children. In Camouflage, another moon, this time "hazy," serves as a vehicle to introduce a catalogue of actions of deception in both the human and animal world, the latter skilfully and sensitively described with exact verbal precision and rich diction. The writing throughout the collection is confident and authoritative, and there is a tone of hushed questing and questioning, of probing boundaries beyond the reach of secretiveness. This is an intriguing and satisfying collection, whose treasures are revealed by careful and repeated readings. It should be on every poetry lover's reading list.
