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.
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]
