Table of Contents

11 Pit Lullaby
12 Megalodon
13 Anatomy Scan
14 In the Birthing Room
15 Metaphysical Breast Milk Poem
16 Ophelia in Ballybough
19 Midwinter
20 Pit Lullaby II
21 A Plea for the Sanctification of the Ditches of Ireland
23 Child you cut me open
24 What It Takes
25 Patchwork Quilt
26 If You Can Tame a Wildcat, You Can Raise a Baby
27 Pit Lullaby III
28 On Poisons
37 Pit Lullaby IV
38 In the Wrong Place
39 Forecast
41 On Plastics
43 Supermoon Trifecta
45 Walrus
46 Men are Talking
47 Pit Lullaby V
48 An Island Sings
56 Pit Lullaby VI
57 The Signs
63 Pit Lullaby VII
64 Nureyev in Dublin
66 Holidaying with Dad During the Divorce
67 Dad Cars
69 Pit Lullaby VIII
70 Milk Teeth
71 Lessons
72 Zodiac
73 Rock Pool
74 Turbulence
75 Pit Lullaby IX
77 Hungry Ghost
80 Bilbea’s Response
81 Lock Years
83 Onion Poem
84 In the Bathroom Showroom
85 Hunting Lions
86 Hawthorn
87 Night Run
88 Pit Lullaby X
89 Lullaby

91 Notes
93 Acknowledgements

About the Author

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, was published by Bloodaxe Books in March 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.

She has received commissions for poems from BBC Radio 4, The Arts Council of Ireland, The Model Gallery Sligo, The Salvage Press, VISUAL Carlow, Dn LaoghaireRathdown County Council and The Poetry Programme (RT), 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 is the recipient of the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry 2023.

She reviews poetry for The Irish Times, RT Radio 1's Arena, and for Poetry Ireland Review. She is an inaugural Creative Fellow of UCD, where she completed her MA in Creative Writing in 2008, and has held residencies including the Yeats Society, Sligo, and Carlow College. She was Dn Laoghaire-Rathdown Writer in Residence for 2021-22 and is University of Galway Writer in Residence for 2023. She is poetry editor at Banshee.

Reviews

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.
*on The Quick*

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 re-thinking of poetic traditions while finding a voice that is wholly her own.
*Poetry Ireland Review, on The Quick*

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.
*The Irish Times, on The Quick*