Alexa Doran : part one

Alexa Doran is the author of the chapbook Nightsink, Faucet Me a Lullaby (Bottlecap Press 2019), and is currently a PhD candidate at Florida State University. Her series of poems about the women of Dada, “The Octopus Breath on Her Neck,” was recently released as part of Oxidant/Engine’s BoxSet Series Vol 2. You can also look for work from Doran in recent or upcoming issues of Los Angeles Review, Passages North, Salamander, Pithead Chapel and New Delta Review, among others. For a full list of her publications, awards, and interviews please visit her website at https://aed16e.wixsite.com/alexadoranpoet.

What are you working on?

Currently I am working on tidying up my first full length manuscript, DM Me, Mother Darling. This collection intertwines the descent (some might argue ascent) of Mother Darling, the mother from J.M. Barrie’s classic tale, Peter Pan, with my personal struggles as a mother in twenty-first century America. From casinos, to boxing matches, to Jewel concerts, what it means to mother is constantly challenged by Mother Darling and myself as we try to make sense of modern society’s kaleidoscopic backdrop. The manuscript is meant to work on the reader like a potion, slowly but powerfully transporting them into the Mother Darling-Me galaxy until, like the speakers in the collection, they are released. Even though motherhood is the lens through which these narratives churn, they hold weight for anyone who has ever felt the mire of grief or the desperation of joy.