Filly by Rosamund Taylor is now available for pre-order
Filly, a new novel in verse by acclaimed poet Rosamund Taylor, is now available to pre-order! Out on 9 October, this genre-bending coming-of-age story will introduce you to two unforgettable characters in protagonist Orla and her charismatic English teacher, Mrs Wall. It’s been described as ‘visceral and tender’ by Mary Morrissy, a ‘perfectly formed sucker-punch of a book’ by Jan Carson, and as ‘a genuinely novel take on a coming-of-age story’ by Louise Hegarty. The beautiful cover is by Jack Smyth.
Though ten years have passed
since I swayed on the musty train
on the way to school,
as sun broke its yolk over the strand,
my stomach tenses when I stand there,
metal pole in my hand, and I hear
an echo of Mrs Wall’s voice
saying the two syllables of my name –
Orla – as sharp as the rush
of salt air when the doors open
at Booterstown.
Rosamund Taylor is the winner of the Rialto Poetry Prize 2025, the Telegraph Poetry Prize 2023, The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2020 and the Mairtín Crawford Award for Poetry 2017. In 2023, her debut collection, In Her Jaws (Banshee Press 2022), was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize for a First Collection and the Yeats Society Poetry Prize, and longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. Her essays have recently appeared in The Irish Times and The Stinging Fly, and her poems have featured in Butcher’s Dog, Magma, Mslexia, Poetry Ireland Review and on BBC Radio 4 and RTE Radio 1.
