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Restricted Movement
This explosive collection of poems documents life as a daughter caring for her father who is a drug addict. Hospital visits, escapes from care, total disappearance, and giving chase during a pandemic are interspersed with moments of calm and appreciation of nature. This audiobook is narrated by the author.
Audiobook
First published June 12, 2021
7 people want to read
About the author
Traci O'Dea
7 books15 followersTraci O'Dea is the author of Restricted Movement (Scotland Street Press, 2021) and Waving (Assure Press, 2021). Her poetry has appeared in the following places: BBC Radio Jersey, Poetry, Poetry Daily, Literary Matters, The Hopkins Review, The Jersey Evening Post, Goethe Institut, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a collection of verse monologues about deaths in a marble quarry.
A poetry editor for the literary journals Smartish Pace and MOKO: Caribbean Arts & Letters, she has previously worked as a lecturer in English language and literature at H. Lavity Stoutt Community College in the British Virgin Islands. Prior to that, Traci O'Dea worked as a magazine and book editor at aLookingGlass Creative, also in the BVI. She spent a year teaching English to high school and post-bac students in Valenciennes, France.
O'Dea earned an MA and MFA from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in English Literature from University of Maryland College Park.
Traci O’Dea currently lives in Jersey, Channel Islands, UK.
A poetry editor for the literary journals Smartish Pace and MOKO: Caribbean Arts & Letters, she has previously worked as a lecturer in English language and literature at H. Lavity Stoutt Community College in the British Virgin Islands. Prior to that, Traci O'Dea worked as a magazine and book editor at aLookingGlass Creative, also in the BVI. She spent a year teaching English to high school and post-bac students in Valenciennes, France.
O'Dea earned an MA and MFA from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in English Literature from University of Maryland College Park.
Traci O’Dea currently lives in Jersey, Channel Islands, UK.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 25, 2022
A fiery collection of poetry that simmers, bubbles and sparks as well as calmly cools against the writer’s experience of caring for her artist father who lives overseas and is struggling with coping with the pandemic as well as battling drug addiction and his spiralling Dementia.
O’Dea’s poems read like prose but shine with bursts of poetic flare that sparkle and glimmer throughout the mundane, bleak and panful experiences of caring for someone who is not there, literally and metaphorically. Tommy O'Dea's illustrations also intricately illuminate moments of brightness and shade in this rich collection that is simultaneously universal and specific to the author's experience of the pandemic, adulthood and artistry. You therefore find yourself finding yourself in corners of lines, pauses of breath and incredibly accurate word choices that zing and sting with how resonant and honest they are.
O’Dea keeps you reading with her poignantly accurate outlook on it all and with her hints of rich escapism that are reigned in whenever the phone rings for news of her father. A brilliant read for any poetry and artwork lover, as well as anyone who enjoys reading about parent-child relationships and how they change over time; and consequently how they have changed during the pandemic.
O’Dea’s poems read like prose but shine with bursts of poetic flare that sparkle and glimmer throughout the mundane, bleak and panful experiences of caring for someone who is not there, literally and metaphorically. Tommy O'Dea's illustrations also intricately illuminate moments of brightness and shade in this rich collection that is simultaneously universal and specific to the author's experience of the pandemic, adulthood and artistry. You therefore find yourself finding yourself in corners of lines, pauses of breath and incredibly accurate word choices that zing and sting with how resonant and honest they are.
O’Dea keeps you reading with her poignantly accurate outlook on it all and with her hints of rich escapism that are reigned in whenever the phone rings for news of her father. A brilliant read for any poetry and artwork lover, as well as anyone who enjoys reading about parent-child relationships and how they change over time; and consequently how they have changed during the pandemic.
Displaying 1 of 1 review