Five Fifty-Five

by Maura Dooley

Five Fifty-Five  is a book of quizzical poems concerned with time and mortality which ask fundamental questions about our lives, such as  Where have you gone?  and  Who were you anyway?  In her first new collection since The Silvering (2016), Maura Dooley tries to find out through conversations with, among others, Louisa M. Alcott, Hokusai, Jane Austen, Buzz Aldrin, Anne Tyler and the Great Uncle and Grandfather she never knew.  There are poems, too, about the difficulties and responsibilities of translation, both from the written word and in interpreting what is left unspoken in different kinds of absence; empty streams, bare trees, the loss of friends. Yet these are poems that find and try to offer consolation.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

Published July 4, 2023

About the author

Maura Dooley was born in Truro, grew up in Bristol.

Educated at the University of York, she gained a postgraduate certificate of Education at Bristol. She is Lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

She edited Making for Planet Alice: New Women Poets (1997) and The Honey Gatherers: A Book of Love Poems (2002) for Bloodaxe, and How Novelists Work (2000) for Seren. Life Under Water (Bloodaxe Books, 2008) is her first new collection since Sound Barrier: Poems 1982-2002 (Bloodaxe Books, 2002), which drew on collections including Explaining Magnetism (1991) and Kissing a Bone (1996), both Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Kissing a Bone was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and Life Under Water was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2008.

She was a Centre Director at the Arvon Foundation and founded and directed the Literature programme at the South Bank Centre. She works in film and theatre and has recently helped develop educational films for Jim Henson Productions. Her work in the theatre includes running workshops for Performing Arts Labs, devising new plays for young people. In 2001 she was a judge for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the National Poetry Competition and the London Arts' New London Writers Awards. She has also chaired the Poetry Book Society.

Reviews

[Michelle McGrane · Rating 5 out of 5]

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗦𝗘𝗔𝗟𝗘𝗬 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗘𝗡𝗚𝗘 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯

𝗗𝗔𝗬 𝗧𝗛𝗥𝗘𝗘

My first introduction to Maura Dooley was in her role as the editor of one of my favourite anthologies, 𝘔𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘦𝘵 𝘈𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘦: 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘞𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯 𝘗𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘴 (Bloodaxe Books, 1997).

Since then, I have read all of Dooley’s
poetry volumes published by Bloodaxe Books. I love her latest collection, 𝙁𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙁𝙞𝙛𝙩𝙮-𝙁𝙞𝙫𝙚 (Bloodaxe Books, July 2023), as I have loved all of her previous works.

Favourites: ‘UnEnglished’; ‘Gaudy Welsh’; ‘The Blue Willow and the Indian Tree’; ‘Uncle Tom Writes Home’; ‘At the Minster Gate Bookshop’; ‘Mayday in Ravenna’; ‘Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji’; ‘A Year in Mr Inoue’s Haiku’; ‘In the Blue Vase; ‘Five Fifty-Give’, and 𝘈 𝘉𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯.

[Jacob biscuits · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to give a starred review. The dominant mood of all these poems is a muffled, neutral, they’re somewhat unremarkable recollections of normal emotions in slight, unmajestic plain language. Sometimes there are flashes of brilliance but only in the mids of a lot of mediocre poetry.

In general there’s something beautiful about this work - I imagine her method as being quite mathematical. Normal words just fall on normal emotions kind of like thick snow

[Uma Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a beautiful sharpness to the poems that touch on what it means to be mortal without overt sentimentality (however, these poems are not without feeling). Atmospheric yet concise. A marvellous poet.

[Nancy Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovely poems which require more than one reading.