WIN $150 GIFT VOUCHERS: ALADDIN'S GOLD
Maura Dooley was born in Truro, grew up in Bristol, worked for some years in Yorkshire, and has lived in London for the past 25 years. She is a freelance writer and lectures at Goldsmiths' College. Several of her previous Bloodaxe collections have been Poetry Book Society Recommendations.Kissing a BoneandLife Under WaterShe received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2016.
The Silvering occupies and explores more deeply the well-planted ground she has made for herself. The poems in this book move with customary reverence between the stripped lyric and something that approaches narrative but never quite becomes it. Her lyrics are often pared back, transformative acts, particularly adept at the making strange... This is not just an act of compression but a master-class in the paradox of elliptical inclusion. And there are many poems in this collection that achieve this. -- Vona Groarke & Tim Liardet * PBS Bulletin * A collection of elegiac poems that make us think in new ways about absence. Dooley looks at what happens when we encounter the memory of something or someone lost, and records how those memories are fixed, like photographs, in the “silvering”. The emotions revisited are as fresh and powerful as they were when first felt. -- Lavinia Greenlaw * The Week (Best books), on The Silvering * Mystery, memory, uncertainty are recurring motifs in these (mostly) brief lyrics that both relish our perceptions and doubt their staying power. -- Beverley Bie Brahic * Times Literary Supplement, on The Silvering *
