Nine Arches Press
Adventures in poetry
The Dodo Stories
Mary Mulholland
(Photograph: Xavier Bonfill)
ISBN: 9781916760509
eISBN: 9781916760516
Price: £11.99
Publication date: 15th October 2026
Format: Paperback / eBook
Territories: World
Extent: 72pp
DCF: Poetry Collections
Mary Mulholland’s poetry debut, The Dodo Stories, delves into the complex and haunting dynamics of a mother-daughter relationship, framed by the shadow of a secretive maternal lineage in Guyana.
The collection paints a complex picture of the struggles that haunt a family’s past, the fractured inheritance of diaspora, the intergenerational silenced grief that is passed down. The Dodo Stories is a testament to the search for lost parts of the self, echoing with a history that refuses to stay buried.
Praise for The Dodo Stories:
'Haunted, compelling, redemptive, Mary Mulholland’s brilliant debut tracks the shame-hidden bloodlines of transatlantic indenture, by following her own great grandparents’ passage from starving Madeira, into seven years’ forced labour on the sugar cane plantations of Guyana. Afterwards denied and obscured by their descendants, this legacy of shadows is rewritten by poems which illuminate what remains among the harsh, lushly tropical beauties of Guyana, but also in archives, and within the Fernandes diaspora. Questing and forensic, but also sensuous, and tender, Mary Mulholland’s work transforms us through its layered revelations of the continuing repercussions of binding human beings into servitude.' - alice hiller
Mary Mulholland’s poems are widely published in magazines and anthologies, often mentioned in competitions, and she's recently been nominated for a Pushcart prize. She founded the poetry platform, Red Door Poets, is a founder / editor of The Alchemy Spoon, and has a Poetry School/ Newcastle MA in poetry. Her background is in psychology and the arts, and occasionally she does a spell of shepherding. @marymulhol www.marymulholland.co.uk
You may also like...
After All We Have Travelled, the debut collection by Sarala Estruch, is a distinctive journey across time, continents and cultures, through memory and generations of family history, exploring the long legacies of empire and its personal and political effects. It is a story of intergenerational trauma, grief and disconnection, but it is also a story of the enduring power of love, of connection, and of embarking into motherhood.
The Nine Arches Press blog features poems from many of our poets, as well as interviews and articles.
.png?etag=%221e00-69668ad9%22&sourceContentType=image%2Fpng&ignoreAspectRatio&resize=39%2B39&extract=0%2B0%2B38%2B39){kind=logo}
