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Maura Dooley

Life Under Water

Maura Dooley

Publication Date : 25 Sep 2008

ISBN: 9781852248178

Pages: 65
Size :216 x 138mm
Rights: World

Poetry Book Society Recommendation

Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize

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).

The poems in Life Under Water take in the physical landscape, family and friendship, as well as the transience of both folklore and politics. In part an attempt to speak of what is submerged, they welcome that ‘splash of cold water to the face’ that tells us we’re alive.

‘A world subtly rippled and distorted, in which everyday objects are “made strange” and nothing, when you reach in a hand, is quite where you expected it to be.’ – Sarah Crown, Guardian

Kissing a Bone, her second collection, adds a shrewd historicising sense to the lyric tenderness which glowed in her first book. It takes us across borders – literal, emotional and figurative – into states of mind which are entirely her own, yet instantly recognisable by all us us.’ – Andrew Motion

Sound Barrier…demonstrates beautifully the strength of this deceptively delicate, often very tender poet: how she marries spare lyrical cadences with political scepticism, packing a whole gamut of wit and sharp observation into very little space.’ – Ruth Padel, Financial Times

 

Maura Dooley reads seven poems

Maura Dooley reads seven poems: ‘Up on the Roof’, ‘What Every Woman Should Carry’, ‘History’, ‘Dancing at Oakmead Road’ and ‘Freight’ from Sound Barrier: Poems 1982-2002 (2002) and ‘The Elevator’ from Life Under Water (2008). Pamela Robertson-Pearce filmed Maura Dooley in London on 8 October 2007. This film is from the DVD-anthology In Person: 30 Poets, filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce & edited by Neil Astley (2008). 


 

  

BOOKS BY Maura Dooley

Five Fifty-Five

Maura Dooley

Five Fifty-Five

Publication Date : 27 Apr 2023

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Sound Barrier

Maura Dooley

Sound Barrier

Poems 1982-2002

Publication Date : 25 Apr 2002

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The Honey Gatherers

Maura Dooley

The Honey Gatherers

A Book of Love Poems

Publication Date : 14 Feb 2003

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The Silvering

Maura Dooley

The Silvering

Publication Date : 24 Mar 2016

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Related News & Publicity

Poetry Events


Maura Dooley events

Maura Dooley events

Hear a newly-commissioned audio poem by Maura Dooley at Leeds Light Night, 24-25 October. The joint online launch for Five Fifty-Five is now on YouTube.

Read More  |  View All

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