The poem is very short so here it is in full.

Waking for work in the winter – William Letford

Even when frost hasn’t left the hard ground rutted by the wheels of tractors
Even though tail-lights clog the motorway
Even though the moon still stands blind and cold in the morning sky
Even though the sheets are clean and the covers are warm
and the person beside you breathes the rise and fall of somewhere deep
Get up
Like the dog that hears a sound in the dark
Get up

I think this is a great first poem. I’m becoming convinced that the first poem in the first collection needs to set out the poet’s stall – the poem needs to tell us what theme’s are going to be explored in the collection – and this poem definitely does that. The theme of ‘Bevel’ is work – and more specifically, working as a roofer and the poem – although it doesn’t say anything about roofing in particular – it does set the stage for a job that involves getting up early – when the moon ‘still stands blind and cold in the morning sky’

I like the way the poem starts as if the poet is half way through a conversation with the reader – the tone is familiar, as if we already know each other because of the ‘Even though’ that start lots of the lines off.

They are long lines as well – they stretch themselves across the page until we get to those two short, curt ‘Get up’ lines which are abrupt and mean what they say.

The use of the word ‘work’ always reminds me of the famous Philip Levine poem ‘What work is’ – this poem tells us what work is – work is getting up, morning after morning, when you’d rather not.

If you get a chance, go and see William Letford read. But if you can’t then do the next big thing and check him out on Youtube – you can find a video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywELiByvlB0

The poem I’ve chosen is ‘Liverpool Echo’ by Olivia McCannon. This poem has kind of haunted me since I heard Olivia read it at the 2013 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. Olivia was reading at Aldeburgh because her collection ‘Exactly My Own Length’ published by Carcanet won the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize the year before.

If you click on the link you can find an interview with Olivia at The Poetry Trust website which is really interesting. I also think it helps with reading a poem to have the poets voice in your head sometimes.

The title of the poem ‘Liverpool Echo’ sounds like the name of the newspaper the man is selling but it also is an exact description of what the poem is about – the ‘Liverpool Echo’ is also the man who has become so much a part of the landscape in Liverpool that even though by the end of the poem we know he is not there anymore, he is there – or at least the echo of his call is.

I have no idea what the word that he calls out means but it keeps repeating throughout the poem – I like to think it means nothing other than ‘I am here and I want to be noticed’.

There is biblical language in the poem – the man is a ‘relentless prophet’ and halfway through the poem there is a turn at the beginning of the stanza and the use of ‘Let someone’ also sounds faintly biblical to me. The references to churches of course support this – his voice – the most real and tangible thing about him is ‘church-loud, hollow and cold’.

Before I started writing this, I didn’t really know why this poem had stayed around in my head – Olivia reads it really well and her ‘C’o!’ is haunting to listen to, or at least it was when she read it at Aldeburgh. Looking closely at the poem now though, I think it is the way the poet has woven death throughout the poem without mentioning it specifically, yet it is real and tangible for example in stanza 3 – it is so cold, that when the man speaks the mist from his mouth is ‘as irrevocable as crematorium smoke’. The only way he can be remembered is to ‘draw his outline on the brick in chalk’ like a murder victim – so who has murdered him? The state? The cold? The poem explores very subtly a social divide – the man who stands outside Marks and Sparks selling newspapers in a ‘worn-thin donkey jacket’ contrasts with the skyline and the ‘lit-up tower restaurant’.

So what does this poem do as the first poem in the collection? I think it alerts us as readers that death will be one of the great themes of the collection – it sets up place as being very important – but place seen through people. I think it sets up the poet as writing from the edge of things – the voice of the poem is very much that of the observer – I think in the same manner as Elizabeth Bishop, McCannon is writing with a cool, detached eye.

You can find the poem attached as well hopefully!

Please feel free to add your own close readings of any poem you feel like, but probably not your own 🙂
Kim Moore uploaded new file(s): liverpool-echo.pdf to Close Readings