With a cover by renowned comic book artist Lisa Sterle, the poems in Jessica Traynors New Arcana explore grief, bad boyfriends and the power of female friendship through readings of the Tarot and Tim Burton movies.
Moving from teenage friendship and destructive relationships towards a tangling with the realities of family life, domesticity, and desire, this highly inventive collection builds into a heartbroken letter to a dear friend (personified in the poems as lydia deetz) who died by suicide. Interwoven with numbered poems from a newly imagined Major Arcana, New Arcana celebrates both the holding on, and the letting go.
Among other awards, Jessica Traynor has received Hennessy New Writer of the Year and the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry 2023. New Arcana is her fourth collection, following Liffey Swim (2014) and The Quick (2019) from Dedalus and Pit Lullabies (2022) from Bloodaxe.
Recenzijos
It is that strong sense of uncanniness throughout Jessica Traynors Pit Lullabies that marks it with distinction. The eponymous Pit Lullabies there are 10 in total form a wild, exhilarating backbone to this collection where bone is a key word. A book about motherhood and birth trauma its roots are firmly entrenched in the natural world Traynors poems, like those of Walter de la Mare, are most deadly when they are pared back, almost child-like. -- Martina Evans * The Irish Times * Fierce and profound, Pit Lullabies is one of the vital books of the new Irish poetry. -- Ciarįn ORourke * New Hibernia Review * Traynor's poems lurk in liminal spaces between light and dark, joy and fear, real and imagined, so that the world is unsettled and unsettling. -- Jenna Clake * Poetry London *
Jessica Traynor was born in Dublin in 1984 and is a poet, essayist and librettist. Her debut collection, Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press, 2014), was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award and in 2016 was named one of the best poetry debuts of the past five years on Bustle.com. Her second collection, The Quick, was a 2019 Irish Times poetry choice. A Place of Pointed Stones, a pamphlet commissioned by Offaly County Council, was published by The Salvage Press in 2021. The poems were later featured in a radio programme written and presented by Jessica Traynor, The Lyric Feature: A Place of Pointed Stones, first broadcast on Lyric FM in October 2023. Her third collection, Pit Lullabies, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2022. It was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was an Irish Times poetry books of the year choice for 2022. Pit Lullabies was shortlisted for the inaugural Yeats Society Sligo's Poetry Prize in 2023. Her fourth, New Arcana, is published by Bloodaxe in 2025.
She has received commissions for poems from BBC Radio 4, The Arts Council of Ireland, The Model Gallery Sligo, The Salvage Press, VISUAL Carlow, Dśn LaoghaireRathdown County Council and The Poetry Programme (RTÉ), and awards including the Hennessy New Writer of the Year, the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary, and the Listowel Poetry Prize. In 2016, she was named one of the Rising Generation of poets by Poetry Ireland. She is the recipient of the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry 2023 and the Field Day Tundish Award 2024 for contribution to the arts in Ireland.
She has reviewed poetry for The Irish Times, RTÉ Radio 1s Arena, and for Poetry Ireland Review. She was an inaugural Creative Fellow of UCD, where she completed her MA in Creative Writing in 2008, and has held residencies including the Yeats Society, Sligo, and Carlow College. She was Dśn Laoghaire-Rathdown Writer in Residence for 2021-22 and University of Galway Writer in Residence for 2023. She is poetry editor at Banshee.
Her website is www.jessicatraynor.com
