Pit Lullabies

By Jessica Traynor

These intimate, visceral and often wickedly funny poems journey through the darker days of new parenthood, teasing out the anxieties which plague us when night falls. Violence against women, the destruction of our environment, the poisons and pitfalls of 21st-century living are explored here in poems by turns lyrical and earthy, yearning and angry. They mine gold from the darkness and seek luminescence in the deepest oceans. Pit Lullabies is Jessica Traynor’s third collection, following Liffey Swim (2014) and The Quick (2019) from Ireland’s Dedalus Press. Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Mar 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781780376073

Jessica Traynor

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. A Place of Pointed Stones, a pamphlet commissioned by Offaly County Council,was published by The Salvage Press in 2021. Her third collection, Pit Lullabies (Bloodaxe Books, 2022), is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She has received commissions for poems from BBC Radio 4, The Arts Council of Ireland, The Model Gallery Sligo, The Salvage Press, VISUAL Carlow, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and The Poetry Programme (RTÉ), and awards including the Hennessy New Writer of the Year, the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary, and the Listowel Poetry Prize. In 2016, she was named one of the ‘Rising Generation’ of poets by Poetry Ireland. She reviews poetry for RTÉ’s Arena, and for Poetry Ireland Review, and has held residencies including the Yeats Society, Sligo, and Carlow College. She is an inaugural Creative Fellow of UCD, where she completed her MA in Creative Writing in 2008.

Book preview

JESSICA TRAYNOR

PIT LULLABIES

These intimate, visceral and often wickedly funny poems journey through the darker days of new parenthood, teasing out the anxieties which plague us when night falls. Violence against women, the destruction of our environment, the poisons and pitfalls of 21st-century living are explored here in poems by turns lyrical and earthy, yearning and angry. They mine gold from the darkness and seek luminescence in the deepest oceans.

Pit Lullabies is Jessica Traynor’s third collection, following Liffey Swim (2014) and The Quick (2019) from Ireland’s Dedalus Press.

‘Visionary, luminous and haunted, Jessica Traynor’s poems are home to a host of compelling characters: witches, changelings, the spirit of Hildegard of Bingen. In The Quick, even the grotesque is rendered with subtle delicacy – a woman whose lungs fold like an origami bird. These poems will give you goose-bumps.’ – Helen Mort

‘Written with a lightness of touch, these poems are capable of dealing with the big themes – especially those of birth, death or illness…this poet [is] capable of creating canonical work which draws on a contemporary rethinking of poetic traditions while finding a voice that is wholly her own.’ – Siobhán Campbell on The Quick in Poetry Ireland Review

‘Traynor is a master at delineating these almost imperceptible but vital changes…Traynor’s fine delicate lyricism belies a social consciousness that subtly bleeds through several poems.’ – Martina Evans on The Quick in The Irish Times

Cover detail: La Vérité sortants du puits (1896) by Jean-Léon Gérôme

MUSÉE ANNE DE BEAUJEU, MOULINS

OIL ON CANVAS, 91 x 72cm

3

JESSICA TRAYNOR

Pit Lullabies

Here’s a song

from deep in the hole…

CHRIS GOSS

CONTENTS

Title Page

Epigraph

pit lullaby

Megalodon

Anatomy Scan

In the Birthing Room

Metaphysical Breast Milk Poem

Ophelia in Ballybough

Midwinter

pit lullaby ii

A Plea for the Sanctification of the Ditches of Ireland

Child you cut me open

What It Takes

Patchwork Quilt

If You Can Tame a Wildcat, You Can Raise a Baby

pit lullaby iii

On Poisons

pit lullaby iv

In the Wrong Place

Forecast

On Plastics

Supermoon Trifecta

Walrus

Men Are Talking

pit lullaby v

An Island Sings

pit lullaby vi

The Signs

pit lullaby vii

Nureyev in Dublin

Holidaying with Dad During the Divorce

Dad Cars

pit lullaby viii

Milk Teeth

Lessons

Zodiac

Rock Pool

Turbulence

pit lullaby ix

Hungry Ghost

Bilbea’s Response

Lock Years

Onion Poem

In the Bathroom Showroom

Hunting Lions

Hawthorn

Night Run

pit lullaby x

Lullaby

Notes

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

11

PIT LULLABY

A whisper in your ear as you sleep –

when I was carrying you,

and you were an electrical storm,

a clump of eels behind the gut,

I cursed a man.

I called all of my demons down

from their rookeries to carry your shock

of legs and stingers to latch onto him.