New Arcana

<p><b><span>With a cover by renowned comic book artist Lisa Sterle, the poems in </span>Jessica Traynor’s <i>New Arcana</i> explore grief, bad boyfriends and the power of female friendship through readings of the Tarot and Tim Burton movies.</b><span> </span></p><p><span>Moving from teenage friendship and destructive relationships towards a tangling with the realities of family life, domesticity, and desire, this highly inventive collection builds into a heartbroken letter to a dear friend (personified in the poems as ‘lydia deetz’) who died by suicide. Interwoven with numbered poems from a newly imagined Major Arcana, </span><i>New Arcana </i><span>celebrates both the holding on, and the letting go. </span></p><p>Among other awards, Jessica Traynor has received Hennessy New Writer of the Year and the Lawrence O''Shaughnessy Award for Poetry 2023. <i>New Arcana</i><span> is her fourth collection, following </span><i>Liffey Swim</i><span> (2014) and </span><i>The Quick</i><span> (2019) from Dedalus and </span><i>Pit Lullabies</i><span> (2022) from Bloodaxe.</span></p>