BONUS FREE CRIME NOVEL! PROMOTIONS
Aoife Lyall is an Irish poet living in the Scottish Highlands. Awarded an Emerging Scottish Writer residency by Cove Park in 2020 and twice shortlisted for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Awards, she was longlisted for the inaugural Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets' Prize in 2018. Her debut collection Mother, Nature (Bloodaxe Books, 2021) was shortlisted for the Scottish First Book Award, one of Scotland's National Book Awards 2021. She has worked as a guest curator for the Scottish Poetry Library and as a guest editor for Butcher's Dog.
Aoife Lyall’s debut, Mother, Nature, explores pregnancy, loss, motherhood, hospitals and grief in moving lyric poems that amount to an extended sequence – the thematic resonance of the collection is detailed, and shows a thoroughness in its consideration of small moments of private grief... One of Lyall's most effective techniques is the exploration of paradox, the volta-like turning of the lyric and its imagery, which makes the best poems here particularly devastating in their contained forms. -- Seán Hewitt * The Irish Times * Mother, Nature by Aoife Lyall was an incredibly powerful book. It was extremely moving to read it. I came to this not really knowing quite what to expect, but I found myself blown away by the visceral nature of the writing. It's an extremely moving and at times deeply upsetting book in the way it treats its subject matter, which deals with loss, remembrance, regret and grief. These are all extremely powerful themes and I think that Aoife presents them in a way that is both powerful, but also accessible. -- Vincent Lal * Co-Judge, Scottish First Book Award * Aoife Lyall’s Mother, Nature is a beautiful and moving collection – a fine debut. -- Michael Longley
