Welcome to the first episode of Season 4! The Melody or Witchcraft podcast interviews begin with a love for poetry, its craft, and a major literary ancestor: Emily Dickinson. I’m your host, Kathryn Petruccelli, a poet, workshop leader, Substacker, & former guide for the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts. Listen in to hear about the concentric circles of the past and the present. Names or poetic references are fleshed out or linked to in the show notes if not in the moment. Thanks for being a listener! Rate us on Spotify HERE, or Apple Podcasts HERE. I met Audrey Molloy for the first time in May of 2026 when I was privileged to take a workshop with her at the Cork International Poetry Festival. I was impressed with how she conducted the workshop itself, the breadth of feedback she provided all of us, as well as how generous she was with her time and skills. In Episode 20, Audrey & I talk about the nuance of “Truth,” the cadence of Irish poets, what has & hasn’t changed for “fallen” women in the 21st century & more. (Recorded September 1, 2026) Audrey Molloy was born in Dublin and has lived in Sydney since 1998. She has an MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Manchester Metropolitan University. Her debut collection, The Important Things (2021), was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize and won the Anne Elder Award. Her third collection, Fallen (2025), was long-listed for the Forward Prize. She has been shortlisted for major awards including the Montreal, Peter Porter, Bridport and Moth poetry prizes. She is co-founder and editor of The Marrow International Poetry. The Dickinson poem Audrey chose: Tell all the truth but tell it slant -Success in Circuit liesToo bright for our infirm DelightThe Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children easedWith explanation kindThe Truth must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind – Loose Poems, (Fr1263, J1129) c. 1872 FallenAudrey Molloy Wives are afraid of me now.They smile at me the way people smile at leopards through glass, or across a moat:how safe we are, over here, in our marriages. A woman can wake to her own wailing.How silly, they will say, this is the sound of guilt; think of the children, they’ll say, not hearing the planeat work on her heart, shaving it down to a leaf. Oh, I read the Russian novels(and you’re not sure now if I mean read or read – if this is happening or had already happened.With loss, both can be true at once.) If the books don’t lie I die at the end of the story,like Anna, or Emma – the fellow-fallen, how almost accidental it sounds! Fallen –as though I’d lost my footing, stumbled on the lip of the moat, or slipped like a child’s dollover the glass fence of the enclosure. What I know of leaving: men stride forthwith purpose, some fine new place in mind. A wife neither falls nor leaps – she ditchesinto the dark hands of the sea, not caring where she comes to ground,driven only by what she leaves behind. Other Dickinson poems mentioned: Wild Nights! – Wild Nights! I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, People and concepts mentioned in the interview: What Audrey notes as “ModPo” at “Pennsylvania University” is University of Pennsylvania’s course in Modern American Poetry. (Pro Tip: LOOK at this! The course is FREE!) Shelley Keats Wordsworth Hopkins Austin Clarke (and his poem, “The Planter’s Daughter”) Hiberno-English (Note that the phrase Audrey uses in our conversation - “I’m after going to the shops,” translates as “I just went to the shops.”) Yeats Kavanaugh (and his poem, “Advent”) Robert Frost Sharon Olds (and her book, Stag’s Leap) Muriel Rukeyser (and her poem “Waiting for Icarus”) The journal Audrey co-founded, The Marrow La Bohème La Traviata Madame Butterfly Carmen Dickens Victor Hugo Tamburlaine the Great Genghis Khan This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kathrynpetruccelli.substack.com/subscribe
