Maura Dooley is a British poet born on May 18, 1957. Though her parents were originally from Ireland, she grew up in Bristol, England. She obtained a degree from the University of York and now resides in London, teaching creative writing at the University of London. Some of her most notable poetical work includes “Explaining Magnetism (1991), Kissing A Bone (1996), and Life Under Water (2008)”. Her poems have gained recognition and achieved several awards, some of which are the Eric Gregory Award, the Forward Poetry Prize, and “were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize”. She has also served as a judge for several poetry/literary prizes, some of which include the T.S. Eliot Prize and the National Poetry Competition, just to name a few.
Some of Dooley’s inspirations and connections in her poems come from poets Elizabeth Bishop and Paul Muldoon. In her actual writing, Dooley dives into deeper meanings and emotions, mostly trying to uncover and capture the “deeper layers of human experience”. Her poem Explaining Magnetism is about the journey into other people’s pasts as well as our own. Kissing A Bone is Dooley’s second poem collection, discussing “memory and photography, love and death” in a captivating way. Life Under Water contains “lyricism and political consciousness” that expresses itself through the form of memories.
