Molly, Etc.
SCOTT ELDER
2026
POETRY
ISBN 978-0-9867097-8-4 (chapbook)
5⅛" × 9⅛", 48 pp.
Limited edition of 50 numbered copies
CA$25
Molly, Etc. explores the myth of the popular 19th-century Dublin figure of Molly Malone in a sometimes peripheral yet deeply human way. Touching on poems as wide-ranging as those inspired by Edgar Degas' "Woman Ironing" painting, Martin Luther King Jr's "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech, and the song "Constellation of the Heart" by Kate Bush, the sea is never far off — or as the speaker reflects in the poem, "I'm What Lingers," we find ourselves with "eyes fixed / on a fold in the sky promising more / and more."
¶ Scott Elder’s small, seemingly slight poem, "Your Neighbour Will Catch You," packs quite a punch. It is the matter-of-fact statement like the opening line "The way is not clear" that pulls the reader into to a sophisticated litany of imagery and rhetorical questions that juxtaposes against each other like pieces of a broken puzzle. It is at once elegiac and fluid. Each re-reading rendering another layer. I kept reading it wondering what the poem was doing with language that enabled it to keep breaking my heart. — Malika Booker
¶ Scott Elder has a butterfly’s touch: his observations lift and settle on flower after flower, and the world is portrayed in snatches with utter delicacy. His writing is painterly, flushed with colours, and full of mystery. — Sharon Black
Scott Elder is an American poet and songwriter who lives in Auvergne, France. He has been among the winners of the Teignmouth, Gloucestershire, Guernsey, and Poetry on the Lake competitions, and his work has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Rialto, The London Magazine, Southword, Poetry Scotland, The Moth, The New Welsh Review, among others. His first collection, Part of the Dark (Dempsey & Windle, 2017), was followed by a chapbook, Maria (erbacce-press, 2023), and a third collection, My Hotel (Salmon Poetry), is due out in 2026.
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