Thumb's Width

By John Redmond

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1857545095
• ISBN13: 9781857545098
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Carcanet Press
• Length: 64 Pages