New Arcana

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, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown 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 1’s 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 Dún 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

It is that strong sense of uncanniness throughout Jessica Traynor’s 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… Traynor’s poems, like those of Walter de la Mare, are most deadly when they are pared back, almost child-like.

• I10 The Hive, xxiii11 Lydia…12 Bog Virgin14 monstera15 and the girl inside me16 Satanic Panic17 Roger Moore’s Swimming Pool18 i’m lydia deetz and all my friends are dead19 Lydia Reads the Cards20 He Gets Her the Cloths of Heaven21 The Liar, xxiv22 Becoming Schrödinger’s Cat23 Ezekiel 47:1124 Queen of Cups28 The Conductor, xxv29 Movie Night with Lydia34 Lydia Reads the Cards35 dear (name)38 Your unifying theory of everything39 The Mistress, xxvi40 The Tower41 The Marishes42 I’m Quartered44 Sheila on the Red Bed45 Magpie46 The Scientist, xxvii II 48 The Glacier, xxviii49 The Fool50 The drunk psychotherapist dooms you at the party51 Movie Night with Lydia56 I’ve Been Meaning to Say, Lydia62 Lydia Reads the Cards63 Entre des bois et des plages sauvages64 Tiger65 Putting My Arms Around the Goat66 In the Night Garden67 A kid tells my daughter her storybook is broken68 Allegory69 Villanelle Villanelle70 The Keeners71 I Read the Cards72 The Thief, xxix73 what the women are doing74 Junk File of Incorrect Predictions75 The Algorithm, xxx76 Rabbits77 The Good Girls, xxxi78 The Steak79 The nights I don’t think about you80 Parachute Malfunction81 Always Eating Your Dad82 King of Wands (Reversed)83 The New Moon, xxxii84 Well-behaved85 A reading for the dead86 to you, one year on87 Ten of Swords88 lydia…89 On Halloween 93 Acknowledgements94 Thanks95 Notes