Maura Dooley Readings

Maura Dooley Readings

 

'Commanding and quietly layered, these lyrically precise and subtle poems deserve revisiting.' - Maya C. Popa, Publishers' Weekly, on Five Fifty-Five

 

Five Fifty-Five is Maura Dooley's sixth collection, her first book since The Silvering (2016). It was published in April 2023 by Bloodaxe Books.  A video of Maura's joint launch reading is below.

These are quizzical poems concerned with time and mortality which ask fundamental questions about our lives, such as Where have you gone? and Who were you anyway? She tries to find out through conversations with, among others, Louisa M. Alcott, Hokusai, Jane Austen, Buzz Aldrin, Anne Tyler and the Great Uncle and Grandfather she never knew.

Maura Dooley's translation of the work of exiled Iranian poet Azita Ghahreman, Negative of a Group Photograph, was co-published by Bloodaxe Books and the Poetry Translation Centre in October 2018.  Maura regularly gives readings and also runs workshops and poetry courses.

'I feel that the special gift of all the writing in Five Fifty-Five is to refresh and heighten our perceptions. Dooley’s talent for metaphor gives her writing imaginative drive in a very obvious way. More elusively, her poetry’s enchanting of the world depends on an indefinable rightness, beauty, evocativeness in the very sound and flow of her lines, and on her tact in surrounding words with pauses and breathing spaces within which the reader’s own thoughts can grow.' - Edmund Prestwich, London Grip 

Read the full in-depth review in London Grip here.

A review of Five Fifty-Five in Publishers' Weekly here.  The book is distributed in the US via Consortium Book Sales.

 

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

 

Friday 22 March 2024, 6:30pm

Voices in Exile: An Evening with Azita Ghahreman, Elhum Shakerifar and Maura Dooley

National Centre for Writing, Dragon Hall, 115-123 King Street, Norwich NR1 1QE

Join the Poetry Translation Centre for a bilingual evening of poetry with Azita Ghahreman, one of Iran’s leading poets, with her translators Elhum Shakerifar and Maura Dooley, hosted by George Szirtes. Maura Dooley translated Azita Ghahreman's Negative of a Group Photograph, which was shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2019. 

Azita, Elhum and Maura will give a poetry reading in Farsi and English, and then discuss poetry and translation across borders with fellow exiled poet, George Szirtes, using Azita’s essay ‘A City Called Exile’ as a jumping-off point. 

Azita Ghahreman will be joining virtually from Sweden. This event is taking place in person and online, and will be BSL interpreted. 

Tickets: £5/7/9. More details here.

 

 

PAST EVENTS

 

Bloodaxe Books international poetry live-streamed reading (April 2023 book launch)

Maura Dooley read alongside Harry Clifton and Matthew Hollis as all three poets launched their new Bloodaxe collections.  After their readings, they discussed their books with each other and with Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley. Maura Dooley read second in each set.


[12 April 2023]


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