Mary Dorcey: The Poet’s Gaze and Scalpel

Abstract

Precision, vividness and colour characterise Mary Dorcey’s representations of individual and yet universal human experiences, such as love, loss, or grief. These are used like a surgeon’s scalpel: to frame, look inside, and closely observe sections of the individual’s body, and life. As we can see from the selection of poetic and prose texts presented here (alongside their translations into Italian), Dorcey cuts the skin of common definitions of private places and feelings (home, love, and grief). She looks at them from uncommon perspectives, bears witness to them, and gains insight from them. These and other issues are discussed in the interview, which is a revised version of a conversation that took place in Bologna (Italy) in November 2014.