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Olivia McCannon

@oliviamcc.bsky.social

Writer | Translator (French) | Dr Creativity, feminism, ecology The Lives of Z (Pavilion Poetry, 2025)

148 Followers  |  300 Following  |  12 Posts  |  Joined: 16.11.2024
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Posts by Olivia McCannon (@oliviamcc.bsky.social)

Poetry Book Launch | Hôtel Amour by Deryn Rees-Jones Join us online for an evening of poetry celebrating publication of ‘Hôtel Amour’ by Deryn Rees-Jones.

Looking forward to this @serenbooks.bsky.social online event 18 November 7pm: An evening of poetry celebrating the publication of ‘Hôtel Amour’ by Deryn Rees-Jones @notjustdancing.bsky.social, with readings by Deryn and guests Menna Elfyn and Olivia McCannon. @pavilionpoetry.bsky.social

05.11.2025 13:32 — 👍 3    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 1

‘it's easy to imagine The Lives of Z joining the likes of Christensen's alphabet (1981) as an essential text ecopoetry for years to come‘

Wonderful review of ‘Lives of Z’ by @oliviamcc.bsky.social @pavilionpoetry.bsky.social in this issue of Poetry Review

28.09.2025 18:08 — 👍 7    🔁 5    💬 0    📌 0

Congratulations Sasha! A well-deserved win for a truly extraordinary book. 👏👏👏

18.08.2025 07:34 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Last day of the @asleuki.bsky.social conf in Galway! Thank you to all those who came to Tuesday's panel on poetry and erosion with the fabulous duo of @jrcarpenter.bsky.social and @kate-elspeth.bsky.social (plus zI). May the conversations continue!

14.08.2025 12:10 — 👍 7    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Back in Galway in glorious sunshine for the ASLE-UKI Biennial Conference! Come to the LUP table for discounted books or to talk about our book series Liverpool Studies in Literature and Environment:
www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/topic/book-s...

@asleuki.bsky.social

12.08.2025 10:38 — 👍 13    🔁 4    💬 0    📌 0
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Want to import toxic chemicals into Britain with scant scrutiny? Labour says: go right ahead | George Monbiot Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Tory fantasy of a post-Brexit bonfire of regulations is coming true. Our bodies and ecosystems will pay the price, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Sorry to burden you with another jaw-dropping scandal. But what the government intends to do to chemicals regulation in the UK is chilling. Its consultation was slipped out so quietly that most of us missed it. When I read it, I saw why.
This week's column:
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

23.07.2025 06:37 — 👍 1287    🔁 766    💬 69    📌 55
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Building Worlds …we can live together in

I'm so grateful to Linda France for her brilliant substack article featuring The Lives of Z (in amazingly good company!) 😊🙏
lindafrance.substack.com/p/building-w...

21.07.2025 13:28 — 👍 7    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 1
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High water bills, filthy rivers – and now drought. This is England's great artificial water crisis of 2025 | George Monbiot In its refusal to nationalise water, it’s clear the government operates in the interests of private capital and not of the country, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

“Nothing undermines climate resilience in this country as much as the private ownership of our water system, and nothing reveals the drought of political ambition like the refusal to renationalise it.”
Spot on @georgemonbiot.bsky.social 👇

18.07.2025 14:02 — 👍 419    🔁 140    💬 8    📌 5

"The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality."
- James Baldwin

06.07.2025 03:28 — 👍 7629    🔁 2077    💬 44    📌 63

Brilliant keynote by Rachael Allen on Poetry of (ecological) epiphany at LABRC ecopoetics conf yesterday - 'what is the power of epiphany and to whom does it belong?' Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Sylvia Legris and 'the distrust of a singular agency in poetry'.... @labrc.bsky.social

05.07.2025 16:25 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

bsky.app/profile/sash...

04.07.2025 13:12 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Thank you for those beautiful words and for your presence last night ❤️ I’d like to credit Jo Morgan for his typesetting design which brings Z to life on the page and in this poster.

04.07.2025 13:11 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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Name our Storms

I wrote a book about the named winds of Europe. Now the Met Office are inviting the public to name upcoming storms, made likelier by fossil-fuel-driven climate change. A campaign is underway to name the next five BigOil, BP, Equinor, Exxon, Shell. Do so here... www.metoffice.gov.uk/forms/name-o...

27.06.2025 07:29 — 👍 11    🔁 7    💬 0    📌 0
A  graphic features a black-and-white portrait of poet Olivia McCannon. Above, the Liverpool University Press logo appears. Below, a quote from McCannon discusses her poetic inspiration for The Lives of Z. The background is light pink with dark green borders and white text.

A graphic features a black-and-white portrait of poet Olivia McCannon. Above, the Liverpool University Press logo appears. Below, a quote from McCannon discusses her poetic inspiration for The Lives of Z. The background is light pink with dark green borders and white text.

In our latest LUP Blog post, poet Olivia McCannon offers a glimpse into her forthcoming collection The Lives of Z, playful and provocative poems asking, how ecological is English?

Find out more:
bit.ly/LivesofZblog

22.04.2025 15:37 — 👍 10    🔁 4    💬 0    📌 1
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Soviet-era spacecraft plunges to Earth after 53 years stuck in orbit Kosmos 482 has crashed back down more than a half century since launch on failed mission to Venus A Soviet-era spacecraft plunged to Earth on Saturday, more than a half century after its failed launch to Venus. The European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking agency confirmed its uncontrolled reentry, based on analysis and no-shows of the spacecraft on subsequent orbits. The European Space Agency’s space debris office also indicated the spacecraft had reentered after it failed to appear over a German radar station. Continue reading...

Soviet-era spacecraft plunges to Earth after 53 years stuck in orbit

10.05.2025 11:39 — 👍 138    🔁 27    💬 13    📌 13
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The birth trauma taboo Theo Clarke’s book paints a damning picture of Britain’s failing maternity services. Change cannot come soon enough.

"Giving birth in England is not safe. Half of all maternity units are rated either inadequate or requiring improvement."

🖊️ @hannahsbee.bsky.social: The birth trauma taboo

10.05.2025 11:51 — 👍 12    🔁 7    💬 0    📌 1
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Bottom trawling is horribly destructive to coastal ocean ecosystems, and deep-sea mining will do the same to the open ocean. #OceanFilm 🌊

10.05.2025 08:39 — 👍 7988    🔁 2682    💬 317    📌 164

Powerful stuff from @sashadugdale.bsky.social In the dirty fire of the great poets / there are lines of such naturalness /
that when you have torched the source /
you too must end in wordlessness.

09.05.2025 20:37 — 👍 7    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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The book and I travelling to Liverpool for the @pavilionpoetry.bsky.social launch tonight with @munozpoems.bsky.social and Sarah Corbett! @notjustdancing.bsky.social

01.05.2025 10:57 — 👍 8    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 0

A copy should be on every desk, not just in the Home Office but throughout government. A bold, brave and hugely timely book 👇

23.04.2025 11:10 — 👍 104    🔁 28    💬 2    📌 2
An image featuring a black-and-white portrait of poet Sarah Corbett. The background is dark blue with a white border and with the white Liverpool University Press logo. Below the image is a quote from Corbett about The Ishtar Gate, reflecting on poetry’s role in exploring personal and collective experience beyond politics or historical narrative.

An image featuring a black-and-white portrait of poet Sarah Corbett. The background is dark blue with a white border and with the white Liverpool University Press logo. Below the image is a quote from Corbett about The Ishtar Gate, reflecting on poetry’s role in exploring personal and collective experience beyond politics or historical narrative.

In our latest LUP Blog post, poet Sarah Corbett offers a glimpse into her forthcoming collection The Ishtar Gate, where the poetry of witness and memorial meets the search for connection.

Find out more:
bit.ly/TIshtarGate

15.04.2025 10:42 — 👍 5    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0
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The rise of end times fascism | Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them

You have to read this article.
"The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants."
By @naomiaklein.bsky.social and @astra.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

17.04.2025 09:49 — 👍 805    🔁 357    💬 32    📌 41
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Happy publication day to Don Mee Choi, whose extraordinary National Book Award-winning work DMZ Colony is out today in the UK and Europe 💫

uk.bookshop.org/p/books/dmz-...

03.04.2025 13:22 — 👍 24    🔁 9    💬 1    📌 0
Black-and-white photo of poet Theresa Muñoz wearing a coat. Pink background with text about her poetry. Quote: “I have always been drawn to write poems about objects…” Logos of Liverpool University Press and a white Pavilion dome icon.

Black-and-white photo of poet Theresa Muñoz wearing a coat. Pink background with text about her poetry. Quote: “I have always been drawn to write poems about objects…” Logos of Liverpool University Press and a white Pavilion dome icon.

In our latest LUP Blog post, poet Theresa Muñoz offers a glimpse into her forthcoming collection Archivum, an exploration of what it means to engage with archival artefacts, and how these objects resonate with events in our lives.

Find out more here:
bit.ly/ArchivumBlog

08.04.2025 09:40 — 👍 5    🔁 4    💬 0    📌 0
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BBC Radio 4 - Rare Earth, Set in Concrete Our civilisation is based on concrete. Can we build in a cleaner way?

Today's Rare Earth (on air at noon) is all about concrete. We associate it with solidity and reliability, but also with being the scourge of the natural world. It has a huge environmental cost, so what does the future hold? And what might a concrete-free world look like?
www.bbc.co.uk/progra...

11.04.2025 10:45 — 👍 53    🔁 16    💬 3    📌 2
A cloud forest from below looking up at the canopy fading into the fog and tall tree trunks covered in a multitude of moss and plants.

A cloud forest from below looking up at the canopy fading into the fog and tall tree trunks covered in a multitude of moss and plants.

In this week’s newsletter, we share a conversation that explores an ongoing effort to gain legal recognition of the Los Cedros cloud forest as co-creator of a song, which if successful, will be a world first. Listen to what true creative reciprocity with the Earth can sound like. buff.ly/SKXbTG9

30.03.2025 12:57 — 👍 26    🔁 8    💬 0    📌 2
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The deep cultural cost of British university job cuts | Letters Letters: Arts and humanities are being hit hardest by cuts in higher education, write Prof Thea Pitman and Prof Emma Cayley, and Dr Ronan McLaverty-Head and another letter writer comment on cuts at Ca...

'The deep cultural cost of British university job cuts" bit.ly/4gnDCuE

An excellent letter, in today's @theguardian.com, by the co-chairs of @artsandhums.bsky.social, a collective of subject specialist organisations representing and advocating for arts & humanities subjects in UK HE. #skystorians

05.02.2025 19:15 — 👍 213    🔁 123    💬 1    📌 3

Details of the Pavilion Poetry launch for this year's books... I am so excited that The Lives of Z will be part of it! @notjustdancing.bsky.social @pavilionpoetry.bsky.social

03.04.2025 17:03 — 👍 4    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

I have an essay in the estimable @emergencemagazine.bsky.social about how we harmonise our lives with nature's rhythms, even as they fall out of synchrony. It's part of a chapter in Nature's Genius, out in May! @canongate.co.uk

23.01.2025 20:08 — 👍 31    🔁 4    💬 4    📌 1
A striped fish "in deepening shades of orange, red, and almost black. Their long, flagged spines and sail-like fins ripple gently in the current" against a dark black depth of the sea.

A striped fish "in deepening shades of orange, red, and almost black. Their long, flagged spines and sail-like fins ripple gently in the current" against a dark black depth of the sea.

Coming face to face with lionfish in the waters of the Aegean Sea, James Bridle traces the unfolding of geology, evolution, and empire that not only occasions this meeting, but binds us in relationship with this “invasive” species. Read this week’s essay, “Here Come the Lionfish.” buff.ly/4jyPQDr

30.01.2025 17:59 — 👍 10    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 1