Book description
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 Â- Â 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'.
