Cairn

Richie McCaffery's debut collection of poems, Cairn, begins in dedication and ends with ghosts - in between lie artefacts and antiquities: a police whistle, a tarnished silver spoon, a bookmark lodged in an old book. These poems find their stories in the overlooked spaces of everyday, and take delight in the unexpected image and turn of phrase. Soaring, short and melancholy, the poems form signposts in the landscape of life, lore and family, mementoes for the buried and the living.

Cairn is an understated and quietly-brilliant collection of poems, where each word is tactile and polished like a beach-combed pebble; these are poems you'll want to pocket and treasure.