The fifty poems in Scatter & Settle traverse multiple locations and subjects, from Australia and the United States to Ireland and England, from Texas to Alaska, from Victoria to Central Europe. O'Reilly's poems investigate emigration, fatherhood, marriage, (un)belonging, gun violence, contemporary politics, environmental degradation, religion, the COVID-19 pandemic, friendship, conceptions of home, and the poet's past. O'Reilly utilises a range of poetic forms, including the duplex, sestina, cento, tanka, sonnet, erasure and pastoral, along with free verse lyrics and found poems, displaying a command of his craft and eagerness to explore, play, and push his poetics into new territory. The poems pay close attention to the details of experience, whether the poet is at home or travelling, using imagery and specificity to illuminate the extraordinary within the ordinary and critique narrow-mindedness, violence, exploitation and materialism. As a body of work, the poems in Scatter & Settle celebrate family, community, nature, movement, experience and the beauty of the everyday.
