Passport

By Richie McCaffery

Exploring place and displacement, boundaries and borders, Passport is the second collection by Richie McCaffery, and follows his acclaimed debut Cairn (Nine Arches Press, 2014). In moving to the Belgian city of Ghent, McCaffery finds "What I see and what happens / are two different countries." In a place of dualities and unrealities, the poems find the usual definitions themselves becoming unstable; the old currency that is no longer valid, the postcards home unsent and the present tense ill at ease.
Written in crisp detail, these fluent poems weigh up whether leaving is a form of running from or coming back to home, wherever that may be. At the heart of this tender and compelling collection, McCaffery writes directly of anxiety, loss and dislocation, asking us to consider what belonging is, and how we find our place in life, in love, and in language.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Release date: Aug 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781911027676

Richie McCaffery

Richie McCaffery divides his time between Ghent, Belgium where he lives with his Flemish wife and the UK. He has a PhD in Scottish literature from the University of Glasgow where he was a Carnegie scholar. Richie is the author of two poetry pamphlets - Spinning Plates (HappenStance Press) and Ballast Flint. In 2014 Nine Arches Press brought out his first collection Cairn. His essays on poetry have been published in places such as Studies in Scottish Literature, etudes Ecossaises, Scottish Literary Review and The Dark Horse. His poems have appeared in journals such as The North, Oxford Poetry, Ambit, The Times Literary Supplement and Magma.

Book preview

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Passport

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Passport

Richie McCaffery

ISBN: 978-1-911027-43-0

eISBN: 978-1-911027-67-6

Copyright © Richie McCaffery

Cover artwork: Léon Spilliaert: ‘La digue’ (inv. 10224) – bestaande digitale illustratie © Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels / photo: J. Geleyns – Art Photography

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Richie McCaffery has asserted his right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published July 2018 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14,

Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in the United Kingdom by:

Imprint Digital

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

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for Stef

CONTENTS

They were worried about me

Breakdown

Postcard from Ostend

Looking for Léon Spilliaert

Double Dutch

Brick

Delft tile

Kongostraat

Ish

Beeldenstorm

University

Ballylar, Fanad

Spoor

Marrakech

Currency

Desert rose

Career change

Ghent statues

Moles

Roots

Auspex

Little farm

Light

Stones

Obituaries

Robin Hood’s Bay

Echo

Apple

Proof-reader

Spanish guitar

Janus

Present tense

The gifts

Calling

Ghent

Typical me

Baudelopark

The paper cut

Iconography

Oil and blood

Nowhere

Postcard

Bottle show

Resolution

Eye test

Day in the life

Balancing the books

The dippers

Spring-cleaning

Ballast

Left hand drive

Corner

An endangered bird made its nest

Acknowledgements and thanks

About the author & this book

They were worried about me

so they got together

to say how much I’m loved.

There are medieval churches

out there that still manage

to fend off the rain.

It sometimes seems like

their