Unborn
Olivia McCannon reading Unborn 872.8 KB
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Once you were a frozen dead girl
I rescued from a lake too late.
I zipped you into my jacket and held you
against me for hours until I felt
your warm breath moisten the air again.
We walked into the city –
so many people. But we couldn’t
find your parents anywhere.
The other time I had you on a cushion
under a shawl in a shopping basket,
birth presents tucked around you.
We were both younger then.
I raised the blanket to watch you as you slept
and under it were hard-limbed plastic dolls
with glossy eye-whites and shellac lashes
staring at the sky behind my back.
Olivia McCannon is currently working on a new version of Balzac’s Old Goriot for Penguin Classics; she also translates plays for the Royal Court. Her poems and stories have appeared in Ambit, the Oxford Magazine and Modern Poetry in Translation. Awards include a Highly Commended in the Harper’s and Queen / Orange Prize for Fiction short story competition. She was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship in 2005.
poetrymagazines' note: recorded at Southbank Centre on 9th December 2006.
Page(s) 4
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
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- French Literary Review, The
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- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
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- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
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- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
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- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
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- Poetry London (1951)
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
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- Shearsman
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- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The