Maura Dooley - What Every Woman Should Carry

[spiros]

Maura Dooley - What Every Woman Should Carry

http://vimeo.com/1154144

My mother gave me the prayer to Saint Theresa.
I added a used tube ticket, kleenex,
several Polo mints (furry), a tampon, pesetas,
a florin. Not wishing to be presumptuous,
not trusting you either, a pack of 3.
I have a pen. There is space for my guardian
angel, she has to fold her wings. Passport.
A key. Anguish, at what I said/didn't say
when once you needed/didn't need me. Anadin.
A credit card. His face the last time,
my impatience, my useless youth.
That empty sack, my heart. A box of matches.

[Frederique]

Poet and freelance writer Maura Dooley, was born in Truro, England, and 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.

Her poetry collections include Explaining Magnetism (1991) and Kissing A Bone (1996), both Poetry Book Society recommendations. Kissing A Bone was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. She has also edited a number of poetry anthologies including The Honey Gatherers: An Anthology of Love Poems, published in 2003, and is editor of How Novelists Work (2000), a collection of essays by contemporary writers.
Her latest collection is Life Under Water (2008), shortlisted for the 2008 T. S. Eliot Prize.

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.

Maura Dooley lives in London.


Poems published in Translatum:

• What Every Woman Should Carry