‘In poetry, Jess Traynor's fourth collection New Arcana is a brilliant, luminous work that blends the mystical and the contemporary, interrogating power, gender, and transformation with precision and lyric grace.’ – Elaine Feeney, Sunday Independent (Best Books of 2025) 

‘Themes of memory, love and loss rub shoulders with Tarot in Dublin poet Jessica Traynor’s fourth collection. [...] a strikingly beautiful nod to the lasting echoes of a friendship - and one not without humour at times, too.’ – Lauren Murphy, RTÉ Culture (The best Irish books of 2025)

‘New Arcana is Jessica Traynor’s striking, ambitious elegy for an old school friend who died by suicide and speaks here through the persona of Lydia Deetz from Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice. Poems imagining a new Major Arcana are interwoven throughout the sometimes funny, always heartbreaking dialogue between Traynor and Lydia.’ – Martina Evans, The Irish Times

‘But what impresses most about the narrative threading New Arcana is the feeling of something revived or even resurrected by Traynor’s strange koans. The voice speaking back at us through the spirit board at the book’s centre feels so true to life that we can almost feel the planchette quivering beneath our fingertips. Ultimately what New Arcana is astute enough to recognise is that the subject of any resurrection necessarily emerges back into the world changed, a little off-centre, forever marked by their dying and the pain of being brought back.’ – James Patterson, RTÉ Culture (Book of the Week)

'Every reading uncovers new depths and moves me more intensely. The understated emotion as well as the imaginative sweep is both a lesson in ‘less is more’ and a measure of Traynor’s skill in making each word work.' – Mary Mulholland, The Alchemy Spoon, on New Arcana

'Drawing from the names and readings of tarot cards, the poems in New Arcana, Jessica Traynor’s fourth collection, are dreamlike and cryptic, reflecting a mosaic of childhood memories and longings. At its core, the book is a long elegiac sequence mourning the death of a much-missed school friend who died by suicide. [...] The power of teenage friendship is celebrated and amplified through readings of the Tarot and Tim Burton movies.' – Jennifer Wong, Under the Radar

'A hard-hitting collection, shaded with light and dark, which makes sense of the cruelty of life through the lens of cartomancy and the films of Tim Burton. Inventive and visceral, these poems are songs of grief, pointers of accusation, dissections of trauma and loss. The desperately tender poems in memory of a lost friend, Lydia, are countered by hopeful, gentle poems about the poet’s daughters. A collection which looks at life askance, chronicling what occurs when “angel(s) / look away”.' – Shash Trevett, Poetry Book Society Autumn Bulletin 2025, on 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. 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 and Jessica Traynor received the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry 2023. She is poetry editor at Banshee.