Maura Dooley’s poetry is remarkable for embracing both lyricism and political consciousness, for its fusion of head and heart. These qualities have won her wide acclaim. Helen Dunmore (in
Poetry Review) admired her ‘sharp and forceful’ intelligence. Adam Thorpe praised her ability ‘to enact and find images for complex feelings…Her poems have both great delicacy and an undeniable toughness…she manages to combine detailed domesticity with lyrical beauty, most perfectly in the metaphor of memory ’ (
Literary Review). In her new collection,
Light that is both wave and particle, those lyrical qualities and visionary sense have light as their focus. Light bends, spreads and travels on continuously and, depending on how we decide to look, both with it and at it, we see how it becomes local and particular. These are poems concerned with the way light falls on water, the natural world and our fraught place within it and, also, what might suddenly be illuminated by memory, history, the passage of time.
Light that is both wave and particle is published on Maura Dooley's 70th birthday in tandem with Dancing at Oakmead Road: Selected Poems, her choice of poems from earlier collections, from Ivy Leaves & Arrows (1986) to Five Fifty-Five (2023).
Price: $17.95
Pages: 64
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
Imprint: Bloodaxe Books
Publication Date:
July 20, 2027
Trim Size: 9.25 X 6.25 in
ISBN: 9781780378305
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
POETRY / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, POETRY / Women Authors, POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Family, POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Animals & Nature
'Sonically elegant and rich with memorable descriptions and images, the latest from Dooley (after
The Silvering) explores the past, mortality, and the silences and omissions that invite deeper reflection on the page... Commanding and quietly layered, these lyrically precise and subtle poems deserve revisiting.'
– Maya C. Popa, Publishers Weekly, on Five Fifty-Five'Dooley's infinitely delicate poems behave "shyly" but never lose their balance on her tightrope of fine connections.' – Martina Evans, The Irish Times, on Five Fifty-Five
'While there is plenty here about private life, about houses, supportive close relationships, and grief at the loss of friends, what gives this collection of poems its weight and balance is the way it places such concerns as a reflection of larger movements and their historical impact.' – Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Poetry Ireland Review, on Five Fifty-Five
'Five Fifty-Five has a sustained set of tender lyrics that work their charm by focusing on moments that leap to gather greater consequence with effortless ease.' – Daljit Nagra, choosing Maura Dooley's sixth collection as his Poetry Extra Poetry Book of the Month, BBC Radio 4 Extra
Maura Dooley was born in Truro, grew up in Bristol, worked for some years in Yorkshire, and has lived in London for the past 30 years. Maura Dooley’s family background in Ireland and Wales has long been central to her work. Her selection, Sound Barrier: Poems 1982-2002, was published by Bloodaxe in 2002, drawing on collections including Explaining Magnetism (1991) and Kissing a Bone (1996), both Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Kissing a Bone and her later collection Life Under Water, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in 2008, were both shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. She received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2016. Her latest collections are Five Fifty-Five (2023) and Light that is both wave and particle (2027), the latter published in tandem with an updated retrospective, Dancing at Oakmead Road: Selected Poems.
