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Something For The Weekend: Jessica Traynor's Cultural Picks

Updated / Monday, 18 Apr 2022 14:33

Pit Lullabies is poet Jessica Traynor's third collection, following Liffey Swim (2014) and The Quick (2019) - she also co-edited Correspondences, the acclaimed anthology calling for an end to direct provision in Ireland.

Traynor has worked as Literary Manager of the Abbey Theatre and Deputy Museum Director of EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, and is currently Poet in Residence at the Yeats Society, Sligo and a Creative Fellow of UCD.

She has also written libretti for a number of operas, including Ghost Apples for INO's 20 Shots of Opera and Paper Boat, set to premiere at this month's Music for Galway event, and is the co-host (with Sean Hewitt) of the new podcast from from International Literature Festival Dublin & DUBLIN Literary Award showcasing this year's DLA shortlist - listen to the first episode below.

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We asked Jessica for her choice cultural picks...

FILM

My taste in movies is pretty abominable. I'm trying to think of something I enjoyed recently that won’t expose me. I loved The French Dispatch, but then I have a very high Wes Anderson tolerance and like to fantasise that someday my writing career will be like this. I enjoyed The Green Knight because I love nightmare trippy allegories like Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England. I also really liked Dune, because it was beautiful and vacant and every action movie should have a hero who spends this much time with his mother.

MUSIC

I’ve been listening to lots of Sharon van Etten, Lucy Dacus, Weyes Blood, Big Thief, Mitski. In terms of Irish artists I just love John Francis Flynn’s album I Would Not Live Always, which was The Guardian’s folk album of the year 2021.

BOOK

I’ve been reading the Dublin Literary Award shortlist for of a podcast I’m co-hosting with Sean Hewitt. We get to interview the shortlisted authors in advance of the announcement of the winner as part of International Literature Festival Dublin. So far I’ve read Danielle McLaughlin’s The Art of Falling, Catherine Chidgey’s Remote Sympathy and The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi. In terms of forthcoming books, I’m excited about This Woman’s Work edited by Sinéad Gleeson and Kim Gordon, and The Quiet Whispers Never Stop by Olivia Fitzsimons.

PLAY

If you missed Conor Mitchell’s fantastic opera Abomination at The Abbey Theatre, you missed out. I saw it in 2019 as a judge for the Irish Times Theatre Awards and was blown away. Next, I’m excited to see a new production of Amy Conroy’s Luck Just Kissed You Hello at the Abbey, a play about gender and identity that feels urgent. And Brokentalkers’ The Examination at Draíocht later this month is a searing interrogation of the Irish prison system. I also have to plug an event of my own – Paper Boat, the opera I was commissioned to write for Galway 2020, composed by Elaine Agnew, is finally being produced in St Nicholas’ Church in Galway by INO and Music for Galway on the 23rd of April.

TV

See reference to abominable movie taste above. Generally I don’t have the focus for TV, I find big dramas require too much of my time and emotional input. I like TV that makes me laugh, and have been enjoying Star Trek: Lower Decks and Inside Job. Other than that, I think I like Gardener’s World, although I’ve never managed to stay awake for an entire episode. It’s the TV equivalent of a cloth soaked in ether, applied firmly but lovingly to the mouth. And I’ve loved BBC’s Springwatch since I was a kid. Both things signal summer’s return to me.

GIG

I’m a big music fan, so I’m really glad to be getting back to gigs post pandemic. I saw Big Thief and Denise Chaila last month, and am looking forward to Lucy Dacus, Sharon van Etten and St Vincent over the course of the summer.

ART

I’m working with visual artist Miriam McConnon and the Oliver Cornet Gallery on a large scale public art installation called Lost Lace, which aims to commemorate those we lost to Covid, and which will be installed in The Iveagh Gardens in the autumn. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to seeing Gerry Blake’s new photographic exhibition, Home Place, in the gallery at the DLR LexIcon, where I also recently enjoyed Cora Cummins and Saoirse Higgins’ On Steady/ Unsteady Ground. Both of these exhibitions engage with climate crisis and our built environment; themes I find informing my own work.

RADIO

I love radio and find it such great company, but I have to say I let a lot of it wash over me. I always keep up with the Poetry Programme, and I love RTÉ’s World Report on Sunday mornings – the stories they report on are always informative and often startlingly relevant.

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TECH

I managed to catch Anne Enright’s the wandering i as part of Ulysses 2.2 at MoLi recently – a motion capture of your eye’s movement as you read a passage from Ulysses. It left me thinking for ages about the disparity between what the eye picks up and what the conscious brain deciphers. I’m excited about Anu’s year-long Ulysses 2.2 programme and will try to catch as much of it as possible.

THE NEXT BIG THING...

I’m really excited about In Her Jaws, the debut poetry collection by Rosamund Taylor, forthcoming from Banshee Press this May.

Pit Lullabies is published by Bloodaxe Books.

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