Jessica Traynor’s debut poetry collection, Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press, 2014), was shortlisted for the 2015 Strong/Shine Award. In 2016, it was named one of the best poetry debuts of the past five years on Bustle.com. She’s currently under commission by Poetry Ireland to work with composer Elaine Agnew and community choirs from the four provinces of Ireland to create a thirty-minute choral piece for performance in 2019. Her next collection is forthcoming in autumn 2018.
In 2016, she was commissioned by the Salvage Press to write a series of poems in response to Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. The resulting book was published in 2017 and a video on the making of the book can be found here. In 2016, she was commissioned by the Irish Writers Centre and the Arts Council to write a ‘A Demonstration’ for the Easter Rising commemorations. The poem was performed in Ancient Rain, which featured in the 2016 Dublin Theatre Festival and the Melbourne Arts Festival.
Poems are forthcoming or have recently appeared in Banshee, Salamander (US), Metamorphic (AUS/IRL), Copper Nickel (US), A Bittern Cry, Rochford Street Review, (AUS), Acumen, (UK), Prelude (US), The Café Review (US) A Bittern Cry (Poetry Ireland) Hallelujah for Fifty Foot Women (Bloodaxe), Washing Windows? Irish Women Write Poetry (Arlen House), The Deep Heart’s Core, The Level Crossing and If Ever You Go (Dedalus Press) Agenda (UK), Poetry Ireland Review, One (US), Windharp (Penguin), The Stony Thursday Book, Abridged, The Penny Dreadful, The Irish Times, The Pickled Body, and The Stinging Fly (IRL). Poems have been broadcast on Irish national radio on the Poetry Programme, Arena and Sunday Miscellany.
Jessica was recipient of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary in 2014. She was named Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year in 2013 and won the 2011 Listowel Poetry Prize. She was the 2010 recipient of a Dublin City Council Literature Bursary and in 2009, was chosen for the Poetry Ireland Introduction Series. She teaches creative writing for the Irish Writers Centre, Big Smoke Writing Factory and various festivals around Ireland and acts as a supervisor for final year Creative Writing dissertations in NUI Maynooth.
Her poetry has been translated into Czech, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish and was projected in Edinburgh, Krakow, Prague and Dunedin in 2014-6 as part of the Unesco City of Literature Programme.
https://jessicatraynor.com/