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

‘In this meticulously crafted collection, Mary Mulholland writes with tact and skill about her enigmatic mother, in search of her complex roots in Madeira and Guyana. Her evocations of the rainforest are fresh and magical, where red howler monkeys roar ‘as if they’ve freed the underworld’ and caimans’ red eyes are fairy-lights. Mulholland weaves these rich details around her ‘exotic morpho mother’, making the landscape and humanity merge in exquisite portraits. The Dodo Stories is a luminous and enthralling debut.’

-- Pascale Petit

‘In this rich, cascading collection, Mary Mulholland carries the reader over time and space in search of her ancestral roots in Guyana. Often filtered through the figure of Dodo, the poems feel like letters steamed open - secrets, half-truths, and the impossibility of knowing are the poet’s materials. And yet, the motors running below the poems are love, yearning, and a deep desire to understand. This combination makes this a beautiful and tender collection - deeply personal, and public, in its unearthing the little-known story of Portuguese indenture to the Caribbean.’

-- Hannah Lowe

‘In The Dodo Stories Mary Mulholland beautifully evokes her maternal family's diaspora and Caribbean heritage. With clear, clean diction she immerses the reader in the atmosphere of Guyana, its nature, history and enduring question of belonging.’

-- Roger Robinson

‘Indentured memories, migrations, colonial histories; neither white enough to be white, nor black enough to be black. Mulholland grapples with an identity that slips from Maderia to Mahaica, to the present day. Rich with lyrical fennel-lapping lizards and haunting harpies. These poems wrestle with the ‘conspiracy of silence’ through the dark nights of intergenerational trauma until the light of day shines on the love between a mother and daughter.’

-- Roy McFar