'I've been moved by Jessica Traynor's mothering poems in Pit Lullabies - intricate, thought-provoking and delightful.' - Nuala O'Connor, The Irish Times (Best books of 2022 so far)

'Some of our best-known poets, such as Jessica Traynor and Annemarie Ní Churreáin, also released new collections. Traynor's Pit Lullabies (Bloodaxe) and Ní Churreáin's The Poison Glen (Gallery) were both concerned with incantation, hexing, history and womanhood, though each is a distinct and urgent voice in their own right.' - Martina Evans & Seán Hewitt, The Irish Times (The best new poetry of 2022)

'Ireland, where I'm from, is not short of great writers... In poetry, there were standout works from Jessica Traynor in Pit Lullabies and Victoria Kennefick's Eat or We Both Starve.' - Sinéad Gleeson, The Guardian (Books enjoyed in June 2022)

'Fierce and profound, Pit Lullabies is one of the vital books of the new Irish poetry.' - Ciarán O'Rourke, New Hibernia Review

'This third collection from a prominent Irish poet contains "intimate, visceral and often wickedly funny" poems which journey through the darker days of new parenthood and "tease out the anxieties which plague us when night falls".' - Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller, New titles: Non-fiction, March 2022, on Pit Lullabies

'...it is that strong sense of uncanniness throughout Jessica Traynor's Pit Lullabies that marks it with distinction. The eponymous Pit Lullabies - there are 10 in total - form a wild, exhilarating backbone to this collection where bone is a key word. A book about motherhood and birth trauma... its roots are firmly entrenched in the natural world... Traynor's poems, like those of Walter de la Mare, are most deadly when they are pared back, almost child-like.' - Martina Evans, The Irish Times

'Award-winning poet Jessica Traynor's new collection Pit Lullabies is now available; it's a beautiful meditation on, among other themes, new parenthood, violence against women, and the destruction of the environment.' - Liadán Hynes, Sunday Independent (Notions & Necessities)

'What a brilliant year for poetry! I am very much enjoying Jessica Traynor's third collection, Pit Lullabies which is witty, wicked and moving in equal measure.' - Victoria Kennefick, RTE Culture (cultural picks)

'I've long admired Jess Traynor's poetry, which is as confident being serious and historical, as it is when it's arch and playful. There's a tenderness to how Traynor writes about motherhood, the body, the places we find ourselves. Her new collection Pit Lullabies proves that she's one of our finest poets, moving through myths, love, and the environment. It's a visceral work that I know I'll go back to again and again.' - Sinéad Gleeson, Dubray Books blog: Irish Writers Recommend Books by Irish Women

'But while it may be dark stuff... the language is also wonderful: gothic, Anglo-Saxon, visceral, and well, exhilarating. It's also attentive to both the tender and the subterranean emotions that arise with the experience of motherhood. More than that, Pit Lullabies harks back to knowledge from ancient times, reminding us of our innate powers as women and as life-givers.' - Afric McGlinchey, Dublin Review of Books

'Here an acerbic wit is fused with ruminations on the female body along with the concerns of early parenthood... Traynor's sound is effortlessly hypnotic, her language formed, deliberate and lyrical.' - Anthony Anaxagorou, Poetry Book Society Selector, on Pit Lullabies

'[Nureyev in Dublin' is] a beautiful poem from a beautiful collection - I've said beautiful a lot during this podcast ... but if you read Jessica Traynor's Pit Lullabies, you'll realise why.' - Frank Skinner

'Addressing a daughter over a period stretching from foetal scan to birth and beyond, she is broadly concerned with the value as well as the control of darkness. [...] This exhumation and valuing of the dark may be connected with the breaking of silence and the exposure of institutionalised forms of maternal and child abuse that have been the Irish writer's preoccupations in some of her previous work. Darkness exhumed, like silence broken, becomes a bright and vital force.' - Carol Rumens, Poem of the Week, The Guardian, on Pit Lullabies

'While environmental crisis mounts in the background and modern life pulses forward, Pit Lullabies traces the arc from birth to infancy and toddlerdom as a much-wanted child ages on a planet that teeters toward catastrophe. Confronting the difficult realities of birth and its aftermath, the tension between the newly born and Earth's dead end builds slowly as Pit Lullabies tries to reconcile the gift of mothering with the fact of having "brought you / to this world of always evening, always leaving," ("The Signs").' - Shara Lessley, West Branch