In Her Jaws

Rosamund Taylor won the London Magazine Poetry Prize 2020 and the Mairtin Crawford Award for Poetry 2017. Widely published, her work has recently appeared in Butcher's Dog, Magma, Mslexia, The Rialto and Poetry Ireland Review. A selection of her poems is included in Queering the Green: Post-2000 Queer Irish Poetry (The Lifeboat Press).

"A book of astonishments whose poems gaze towards the night sky and all that stirs in the dark below, swooping the reader through mysteries of desire and discovery. Taylor's voice is by turns tender, sharp, luminous; her poems are wondrous." Doireann Ni Ghriofa "In these haunting, simmering metamorphoses, Rosamund Taylor's imagination is both intrepid and tender. Spanning the erotic and the traumatic, these poems root through the fibrous dark of our psyche. In Her Jaws is a breath-taking debut." Sean Hewitt "Taylor's poems possess a talismanic quality. With lyric sorcery, she conjures encounters with a chorus of wild creatures: spectres and lovers, selves and others. Beneath the seductive gleam of her poetry lies an invitation to glimpse the fabulous. In Her Jaws will hold you in thrall." Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe "Rosamund Taylor's stunning debut reignites the lyric tradition with poems that movingly and daringly explore pain and despair, desire and belonging while evoking the more-than-human world anew. Her voice is ever original and ever beautiful." Jane Clarke "In Her Jaws is an extraordinary achievement with poems gem-like in their intensity, clarity and precision - but make no mistake, there is wildness here too ... This is a debut that leaves bite marks in the most erotic and intoxicating sense ... In Her Jaws is here, finally, and it was certainly worth the wait." Victoria Kennefick "Taylor's language, form and imagery exhibit a remarkable freshness, resulting in work that manages to create a space between the uncanny and the familiar. Her sexuality and her feminism are carried candidly and address universals through the specifics of queer love and the experiences of women through history. This is the Irish lyric tradition queered in the manifold and finest meanings of that word. Taylor's is a poetry I do not want to be without. We are all the richer for it." Paul Maddern "In Her Jaws is by turns delicate and fierce; holding the reader gently in its muzzle, where we thrill to the awareness of teeth against our carotid. Taylor inhabits the natural world like no other writer working today; shapeshifting, questioning, and enthralling us with her curiosity. " Jessica Traynor "The reader travels wild paths in skilled hands. Taylor's voice is evocative, assured and unforgettable. This is absolutely exquisite." Deirdre Sullivan