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    Exactly My Own Length
    Exactly My Own Length
    Exactly My Own Length
    Ebook62 pages19 minutes

    Exactly My Own Length

    By Olivia McCannon

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Beguiling and lyrical, this first collection of poetry by writer Olivia McCannon measures out memories and builds memorials for the departed. Resonant with family history, these poems resurrect the past in tender portraits and remembrances while also conveying an awareness of borders and foreignness due to the poet’s experiences in translation.  

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCarcanet Press Ltd.
    Release dateDec 1, 2011
    ISBN9781847777003
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      Book preview

      Exactly My Own Length - Olivia McCannon

      OLIVIA McCANNON

      Exactly My Own Length

      For Judith McCannon (1947–2008)

      Acknowledgements

      Acknowledgements are due to the editors of Modern Poetry in Translation, the Oxford Magazine, Penguin’s Poems for Life and Penguin’s Poems for Love, the OxfordPoets anthology 2007, the Keats-Shelley Review, the Wolf and Saw, in which the following poems first appeared: ‘Liverpool Echo’, ‘City of the Dead’, ‘Mirror’, ‘Dust’, ‘Map’, ‘Cohabitation’, ‘Paper Tiger’, ‘Probability’, ‘Light-Stone’, ‘Barometer’, ‘Unborn’, ‘Ironing’, ‘Number 3’, ‘Exactly My Own Length’, ‘Book of Hours’, ‘Laughter’, ‘Sick World’, ‘At the Door’, ‘Honouring the Dead’, ‘Landing Light’, ‘Vigil’, ‘What To Do With a Baby’ and ‘Fragile Domain’.

      Contents

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Acknowledgements

      Liverpool Echo

      City of the Dead

      Dust

      Mirror

      Map

      Cohabitation

      Paper Tiger

      Jubilee Portraits

      No. 3

      Probability

      Argyle Street, 1983

      Barometer

      Unborn

      Light-Stone

      The Offer

      Ironing

      Map of the Moor

      Hope Street, 1966

      Retirement

      Month of Herons

      Exactly My Own Length

      Book of Hours

      Laughter

      Sick World

      At the Door

      Honouring the Dead

      You Said This

      The Weight of Life

      The Lovelace Place

      No More Fields

      Stewed Fruit

      A Request to the Cranes

      Landing Light

      Vigil

      What To Do With a Baby

      Fragile Domain

      Conversation

      Nothing I Can Do

      All Souls’ Day

      Memorial

      Last and First

      About the Author

      Copyright

      Liverpool Echo

      He’s not there any more, the man outside Marks and Sparks,

      Twice a minute every day for years, he shouted – ‘C’o!

      It was always winter and always dark,

      His – ‘C’o! was church-loud, hollow and cold.

      A blast of mist, shaped by his mouth’s warm hole

      Into an O as irrevocable as crematorium smoke.

      Wiping out the Socks and Lighters three for a pound Ladies

      As it hacked

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