Jessica Traynor is an award-winning poet, creative writing teacher and dramaturg from Dublin.
Jessica Traynor is the author of three critically acclaimed books of poetry. Her latest collection, Pit Lullabies, (Bloodaxe Books, 2022), is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
She is the 2023 recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award and is the 2023 Arts Council Writer in Residence at Galway University, and a Creative Fellow of UCD.
She is poetry editor at Banshee Press
Photos by Bríd O’Donovan.
'Fierce and profound, Pit Lullabies is one of the vital books of the new Irish poetry.' - Ciarán O’Rourke , New Hibernia Review
‘Here an acerbic wit is fused with ruminations on the female body along with the concerns of early parenthood… Traynor’s sound is effortlessly hypnotic, her language formed, deliberate and lyrical.’ – Anthony Anaxagorou, Poetry Book Society Selector, on Pit Lullabies
‘Wild and exhilarating…it is that strong sense of uncanniness throughout Jessica Traynor’s Pit Lullabies that marks it with distinction.’ - Martina Evans, The Irish Times
Writing in The Irish Times, Martina Evans said of The Quick:
‘Traynor is a master at delineating these almost imperceptible but vital changes…Traynor’s fine delicate lyricism belies a social consciousness that subtly bleeds through several poems.’
‘Written with a lightness of touch, these poems are capable of dealing with the big themes – especially those of birth, death or illness…this poet [is] capable of creating canonical work which draws on a contemporary re-thinking of poetic traditions while finding a voice that is wholly her own.’
- Siobhan Campbell on The Quick, Poetry Ireland Review
‘Long-memoried and prioritising the sanctity of all life, The Quick should be praised as a book ‘built to stagger on’ (‘The Quick’) and forge a compelling vision of the future.’
- Jake Morris-Campbell on The Quick, Poetry School
‘Swarm is one of the strongest poems in the book, working its way into our consciousness through a stately, supple rhythm that canters it along…This poem should be put on the school syllabus right now - and all mature students of poetry should know of it too, and it should be translated, so that everybody will take notice.’
- Patrick Kehoe on The Quick, RTÉ.ie
Death and the dead are a restless, persistent force in Jessica Traynor’s poetry…The British poet Alice Oswald has said: “people often tell me they turn to poetry for comfort, but I turn to it for discomfort.” Jessica Traynor’s new and second collection is not a book that we would readily turn to for comfort. But perhaps this is exactly what makes The Quick an intriguing read.’
- Enda Wyley on The Quick, The Dublin Review of Books
‘Visonary, luminous and haunted, Jessica Traynor’s poems are home to a host of compelling characters: witches, changelings, the spirit of Hildegard of Bingen. In The Quick, even the grotesque is rendered with subtle delicacy – a woman whose ‘lungs fold like an origami bird’. These poems will give you goose-bumps.’
- Helen Mort
‘These are poems of such formal ease and control that it is hard to believe this is only Jessica Traynor’s second collection. Her marriage of form and material is accomplished, intelligent and right.’
- Mary O’Malley
