Exactly My Own Length

McCannon Olivia

Olivia McCannon's first collection explores life on the edge of possibility: in one moment the familiar is blown open, we plunge into the unknown. A chance meeting seals a lifetime; a girl leaps from a window, away from safety – "she wanted to see what can happen". From families improvising a living space in Cairo's City of the Dead, to a veteran of the Normandy landings coming home to the peaceful reparation of "glueing, welding, soldering", life is luminous, and resolutely seized. The closing sequence follows the last months of the poet's mother's life. A journey into grief and loss, it pays tribute to the courage of refusing false comfort, the strength that in the end enables us to live "between the lines / of tombs".

About the Author

Olivia McCannon was born on Merseyside and lives in Harlesden, London. Her collection "Exactly My Own Length" (Carcanet/Oxford Poets, 2011) was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize and won the 2012 Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize.

She lived for nine years in France – eight years in Belleville, Paris – and her translations from French include Balzac's "Old Man Goriot" (Penguin Classics, 2011), modern poetry in "Poetry of Place: Paris" (Eland, 2013) and contemporary plays for the Royal Court theatre in London. She also writes short fiction, lyrics and libretti.

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