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Filly by Rosamund Taylor

£14.99

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.

From acclaimed poet Rosamund Taylor comes a compelling, genre-bending coming of age story. In the hostile world of Ireland’s secondary school system, Orla is discovering her burgeoning sexuality. When her friend Muireann rejects her advances, Orla turns to her online community for support, and to her charismatic English teacher Irene Wall for a love affair both passionate and annihilating.

A novel in verse about sexual awakening, masochistic love, and the transformative possibilities of community, Filly introduces two unforgettable characters in Orla and the complicated and magnetic Irene Wall. Written with Taylor’s trademark earthy lyricism, Filly is an exploration of intergenerational love and trauma, and an explosion of queer joy.

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.

From acclaimed poet Rosamund Taylor comes a compelling, genre-bending coming of age story. In the hostile world of Ireland’s secondary school system, Orla is discovering her burgeoning sexuality. When her friend Muireann rejects her advances, Orla turns to her online community for support, and to her charismatic English teacher Irene Wall for a love affair both passionate and annihilating.

A novel in verse about sexual awakening, masochistic love, and the transformative possibilities of community, Filly introduces two unforgettable characters in Orla and the complicated and magnetic Irene Wall. Written with Taylor’s trademark earthy lyricism, Filly is an exploration of intergenerational love and trauma, and an explosion of queer joy.

About the Author 

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.

Praise for Filly

“Filly is a testament to the savagery and exaltation of love. Taylor blends muscular narrative with lyrical poetry in an ambiguous coming-of-age story that is at once visceral and tender.”

— Mary Morrissy

“I devoured Filly in a day ... Rosamund Taylor perfectly captures early-noughties girlhood in all its awkward pain and ecstasy. Compelling and poetic, Filly doesn’t shy away from the dark but shows us the light and joy that might lie beyond it.”

— Liz Berry

“Filly is a perfectly formed sucker punch of a book. Taylor writes the dark and troubling, gently and with carefully controlled empathy. There’s a lot going on between the lines of this story. Taylor writes characters who defy the reader’s expectations at every turn.”

— Jan Carson

“Raw and poetic, tender yet unflinching - a genuinely novel take on a coming-of-age story exploring burgeoning sexuality, literature and queerness.”

— Louise Hegarty

Publisher: Banshee Press

Date Published: 9 October 2025

Paperback, 248 pgs.

ISBN: 978-1-7393979-8-2

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