Thumb's Width

Redmond John

The title Thumb's Width, from the German Daumenbreite (roughly equivalent to an inch), indicates the book's preoccupation with the miniature. Sketching the child-hood relationship between two brothers, the poems frequently focus on small objects – shrimps, cigarettes, "cat's eyes", plastic soldiers – to which childhoods become attached. Beginning on the west coast of Ireland, particularly the tiny islands where human settlement has ceased, the book travels out, geographic-ally and thematically, by means of a variety of lyric, comic and dramatic forms. These patterns act to fold the smaller, remembered patterns of an Irish childhood into the larger shapes of the adult world.

About the Author

John Redmond was born in Dublin in 1967. After completing a D. Phil on the subject of contemporary poetry at Oxford, he taught for two years at Macalester College in Minnesota. Currently he is a Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool. He reviews poetry widely and was associated with the poetry magazine, Thumbscrew. He has published a textbook "How to Write a Poem" (Oxford: Blackwell) and was the editor of "James Liddy: Selected Poems" ("Dublin: Arlen House"). His critical book "Poetry and Privacy: Questioning Public Interpretations of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry" has just been published by Seren.

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