The Owl Inside

The Owl Inside presents an often haunted and feral, sometimes confessional and domesticated enquiry into what it means to be alive in the Anthropocene. These poems are suffused with musings on the escape to outer space, secret communications between trees, the movement of birds, suburban trampolines, motherhood, midnight wanderings, the climate crisis, motorbikes, affairs, bushfires and barbie dolls, yet in all this lies a quest for what can be found just beyond the material, heading towards the numinous.



'The Owl Inside dictates everyday encounters with alterity, as if Jack Spicer was a single mum shacked up on the shores of Lake Macquarie, distilling a language of the alien self, Ireland's collection is a paean to pent up frustrations and anxieties, absolved by a humble heuristics of living. Her muse; bin night.' - Keri Glastonbury



'This is a poetry all at once sensuous, moving, strange and familiar. The language springs gazelle-like from original thought to thought as the poet pulls apart our modes of perception then finds luminous ways to put them together again.' - Judy Johnson



'The Owl Inside is both a development of and a departure from Ivy Ireland's previous work. What remains is her sharp-eyed engagement with complex ideas and the electric zap of her language. What is new, or at least enhanced, is a lyrical openness to emotions, personal history and the everyday. The Owl Inside is a rewarding read.' - Brook Emery



Ivy Ireland is the author of Incidental Complications (2007) and Porch Light (2015). Her literary awards include the Australian Young Poet Fellowship, the Harri Jones Memorial Prize, the Thunderbolt Prize and the Newcastle Poetry Prize local award and her poetry, essays and reviews have been widely published in journals and anthologies.