Milk

On Motherhood and Madness

By: Alice Kinsella

Narrated by: Alice Kinsella

'Sublime' - Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers
'Here is a writer who matters' - The Irish Times
'A book about the raw, riotous, brutally beautiful act of being alive.' - Kerri ní Dochartaigh, author of Thin Places
'Milk is a raw, unvarnished journey down the mothering rabbit hole' The Irish Independent

I have become the common myth. Mother. The sleepy hum of early memories. The smell of shampoo, of Olay, of lavender. The feeling of safety. The absence of fear.


When poet Alice Kinsella becomes a mother, she finds herself utterly lost. As she searches for answers to the question of her new identity, she considers the mothers and writers who came before her. In her inimitable poetic style, Kinsella takes pregnancy and the first nine months of motherhood and forms from them a broken prism through which to view both a woman’s place in the world, and her child’s in the future we’re creating.


‘A radiant, meditative, truly powerful and beautiful book’ Joseph O’Connor, author of Star of the Sea
‘Spellbinding’ Rick O’Shea

©2023 Alice Kinsella (P)2023 Macmillan Publishers International Limited