Traci O'Dea
author of RESTRICTED MOVEMENT and WAVING
Photo by Paul Hubbard
PRAISE
"O'Dea's poetry is evocative, illuminating, modern, and fierce. She displays such perfect juxtaposition between the natural world and the personal world inside us all. Her words are at once beautiful, original, searingly honest and at times haunting. She guts the human condition and serves it up warm, still breathing on the page."
"The vulnerable, undefended body may be lost in the waves of time and tide and cultural expectation, but the imagination may rise above those waters...beach reading of the thrilling sort."
"Unflinching in its portrait of filial devotion, Traci O'Dea's Restricted Movement is beautiful and funny. This collection of poems—both love letter and intimate diary—is so skillfully wrought that the lines often seem effortless—almost casual—and yet O'Dea's formal and emotional control is impeccable."
“Traci O'Dea's Waving is a meditation on the body and the universal sea, of letting go and letting be, as preoccupied with the spiritual as the physical. In it, a glossy stripe on a beach is first a watch, then a minnow—the body's breath echoes and the lover lowers herself in the September sea. This is a collection that seeks the quiet liminal spaces between the surf and the shore, those moments of contemplation before the relentless waves return.”
RICHARD GEORGES,
POET LAUREATE OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS (UK), AUTHOR OF EPIPHANEIA, WINNER OF THE OCM BOCAS PRIZE FOR CARIBBEAN LITERATURE
"Traci O'Dea has written verse that complements her old man's visions like a tugboat pulling a freighter out to deep water."
JOANNA PEARSON,
AUTHOR OF NOW YOU KNOW IT ALL, WINNER OF THE DRUE HEINZ LITERATURE PRIZE
"Traci O’Dea has created an omnivorous idiom, able to digest anything from slang to sophisticated allusion. Waving has it all—short and taut lines, long and loping lines, middle-length lines from which she weaves immaculate sonnets, and everything with such depths that it 'tugs like undertow.' She is the poet I have been looking for, the poet who is equally adept with the aural and visual aspects of a poem. Her work has the sonorousness of formal verse and the scenic delights of vers libre. She really is the lover of both drummers and painters. If any poet can heal the poetic divide, she is the one."
AARON POOCHIGIAN, AUTHOR OF AMERICAN DIVINE, WINNER OF THE RICHARD WILBUR AWARD
"Traci O'Dea's Restricted Movement is timely, stirring, and sharp as a knife. A pandemic book, an addiction story, and a love letter to a troubled father, it defies the odds by also being really fucking funny. If you needed any further proof that form lends force to feeling, here it is."
MATTHEW BUCKLEY SMITH,
AUTHOR OF MIDLIFE, WINNER OF THE RICHARD WILBUR AWARD, AND HOST OF THE POETRY PODCAST SLEERICKETS
BIO
Traci O’Dea is an American poet living in Jersey, UK where she is currently composing a novel in verse and a collection of verse monologues. Her poetry has appeared in the following places: BBC Radio Jersey, Poetry, cellpoems, Literary Matters, The Hopkins Review, The Jersey Evening Post, Jersey Arts Centre, Jersey Library, Goethe Institut, and elsewhere.
A poetry editor for the literary journals Smartish Pace and MOKO: Caribbean Arts & Letters, O'Dea is the author of two poetry collections: Waving (Assure Press, 2021) and Restricted Movement (Scotland Street Press, 2021) for which she received a Seed Funding Grant from Arthouse Jersey.
Photo by Matt Porteous
Traci O'Dea reads'Iambic Pandemic' for Arthouse Jersey Presents
Traci O'Dea's workshop on 'Restricted Movement' for students aged 12-18
Online Poetry: Sparks in the Dark with Traci O'Dea from the Stockbridge Library
"If Fortresses Could Bow" commissioned by ITV Channel TV for the memorial of Queen Elizabeth II, performed by Nicole Twinam
'Free Verse'
from cellpoems
'In the Sun Room'
from Unsplendid
'3.14'
from Literary Matters
'January in the Tropics'
from Unsplendid
'Of the Mouth and Lungs'
from Lit.
'One Week'
from Poetry
Traci O'Dea reads three poems at
Johns Hopkins University
Traci O'Dea reads 'Substitution'
for Jersey Arts Centre
Traci O'Dea Virtual Book Launch
for Scotland Street Press
Inquiry: The Power of Poetry interview with Stockbridge Poetry Library
'Hair Receiver'
from Unsplendid
a translation of 'The Albatross'
by Charles Baudelaire from Literary Matters
'Manchineel'
from Literary Matters
'Cushion Sea Star'
from Unsplendid
'The Body'
from 32 Poems
'Blackout'
from cellpoems
'My Neighbor Put Summer out with the Trash'
from Potion
