posted on 09 Sep 2016

Off the shelf: a celebration of bookshops in verse  edited by Carol Ann Duffy

I don’t know about you but I often find it quite difficult to make the transition from finishing one book to starting the next one. This is especially true if the one I’ve just finished has been a big, absorbing read that requires me to make something of a mental re-entry to the real world. What helps me in situations like that is something  a bit more laid back, requiring less all-consuming commitment and which I can pick up and put down without breaking any important threads.

Off the shelf  meets that need to perfection. It’s a collection of 30 poems of all kinds that are bound together by their collective subject matter – bookshops. For me at any rate, this is an irresistible combination. The book is a consequence of the Shore to Shore  tour of independent bookshops which was undertaken in the summer of 2016 which saw an ever changing roster of poets performing live at different bookshops along the length and breadth of the country. As well as helping to get poetry out into the community, the tour was designed to highlight the unique role independent bookshops have to play in the well-being of our towns and cities.

As well as work by Carol Ann Duffy herself, you’ll find poems here from Liz Lochhead, Jackie Kay, Don Paterson, Daljit Nagra, Gillian Clarke and a host of other poets working in the UK today.  What is particularly nice about this collection is the huge variety you’ll find here – from the very light and humorous to the much more thoughtful and philosophic. It’s a horrible old cliché but there really is something for everyone. What I also found engaging was that the brief has allowed the poets to not be too literal in terms of simply reflecting the tour of bookshops that was being made – so we get poems that travel backwards and forwards in time and which venture overseas, providing a real sense of a three dimensional experience.

It’s daft to try and say which of these is my favourite because so many of them have qualities that could put them into that category but, for the moment at least, the one that has stayed longest with me is Jackie Kay’s  offering  Silver Moon.  I say ‘for the moment’ because I’m aware that when, in the not too distant future, I pick the anthology up again and dip into it, another one will jump out at me and take its place as my current go-to poem.

In the meantime, enjoy this from Jackie Kay:

Silver Moon

Your names, old records, Court and Spark, Dark Side of the Moon,
A shop window welcome; open hands, new friends.
A wintery evening, nights drawing in. Warm glow:
Sisterwrite, Compendium, Silver Moon.

How you grew up reading nights to dawn.
Books you found only here, the then unknowns:
Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, Toni Cade Bambara;
The Bluest Eye held up a haunting mirror, Pecola Breedlove.

Switched lights on; eyes wide open – Sula, Corregidora
You read and read with wonder: We Are Everywhere:
Writings About Lesbian Parents! Or A Raisin in the Sun.
Voices from Women’s Liberation, Maya, Djuna, Zora,

The Spinster and Her Enemies! Or Lucille Clifton.
And by the silvery light of the bookshop you grew up
By the open door, standing alone, together,
Other readers as engrossed, browsing, basking –

The blessed benevolence, the sweet, sweet ambience
Of independent bookshops, remember Thins!
Look how you still love their names: Voltaire and Rousseau,
Grassroots, books gathering and honing your years:

Black and white striped spines, tiny irons, Viragos, Shebas,
The distinct spiral on the cover of your old The Bell Jar
Your skin’s pages; your heart’s ink, your brain’s Word Power:
Jamaica Kincaid, Bessie Head, Claribel Alegría.

Don’t let them turn the lights out, dears.
Keep them safe, New Beacons, shining stars,
Look how you’ve aged with your beloved books, dear hearts.
Keep coming in, keep the bookshop door ajar.

 

Terry Potter

September 2016