From a brilliant new talent, Milk is an astonishingly evocative, intimate and moving memoir charting one woman's first year of motherhood.

'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

"'A compelling and moving account of [Kinsella's] initiation into, and life experiencing motherhood following the birth of her first child in her mid-20s . . . Sharp, brutal, unrelenting, vivid, capturing moments and emotions in the experience and psychology of motherhood, its demands, exhaustion, evocation of mortality, fears and sources of guilt as well as its joys . . . On the strength of this powerful, visceral, memorable, touching and, above all, beautifully rendered prose debut, there is little doubt Kinsella's compelling voice will be listened to: here is a writer who matters'" - The Irish Times

"With its lyrical power, intimacy and political top-notes, Milk is already being compared to works by Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Kerri ní Dochartaigh and Emilie Pine. " - The Irish Independent

"Presented in sharp fragments, this deft meditation pierces straight to the core of motherhood, in all its tenderness and strife." - RTÉ

"More than motherhood, Kinsella's memoir is about the struggle to feel what she calls 'real' in the age of social media. Her journey is an important and absorbing one that speaks to us all, female or not." - TLS

". . . time and structure are let loose in a genre defying book destined to become a cult classic." - Books Ireland

"Her analogy of both the body and the planet as homes in crisis stings with accuracy. As an intimate, shocking, and cathartic picture of existence in the frame of motherhood, Milk is simply stunning." - NB magazine

"Part epic prose poem, part fully referenced essay, Milk is ‘series of small epiphanies’ told in tight fragments that reflect the confinement of the mother-poet." - Mslexia

"Powerful yet delicate" - Limerick Leader

"Almost lyrical at times, [Kinsella's] prose flits through a series of vignettes, offering glimpses into her physical health, state of mind and worries." - Financial Times

"Deeply personal but with a universal resonance as a study of motherhood in a supposedly modernised Ireland." - Mayo Advertiser

"Lyrical, thought-provoking, important addition to the genre." - Irish Examiner