In praise of second hand book sellers

Real magic. (Second hand books)

Let us praise and give thanks to the second hand book seller, custodians of  dusty magic, and forgive him or her for driving me to financial ruin, since that’s nobody’s fault but mine. And forgive the grumpy ones who mumble when I leave without buying anything, and be understanding of the ones who find it difficult to part with any of their books,  and maybe even forgive that really irritating one who will remain nameless but who doesn’t bother to open his shop.

But let us praise  those who can produce the book I need,  who wrap it so carefully, (unlike Amazon.co.uk)  and mail it from Glasgow or Calcutta, Singapore or Solihull, let us give thanks for the absurdity of Bookfinder.com which allows me to browse for books I need in countries I will never visit  and let us not forget the miracle of the international postal service, which is one of mankind’s greatest inventions, and which whisks my book across the globe to the laughing man who delivers it: “Another book? Do you eat them? “

And let us praise that endless mystery: the second hand book. Let us not pause too long on the smell and feel of them for fear of sensual distraction,  but consider the faded, the scribbled in, or the pristine  (pages uncut for a century),  books with missing plates, books badly paginated, books unpaginated, books read to destruction and skillfully or badly rebuilt,  and of course the unexpected ‘signed by the author’ “To Bill”.   The grammar textbook printed in Calcutta  in 1901. The book of Tennyson’s poems presented to Mabel on her twenty first, with love from Fred, who hopes she’ll like it and to see her soon, Bradley’s Lectures on Poetry given as a prize to the Dux of mathematics at the Glasgow Grammar school  in 1916/7. 

So reading Tennyson, In Memoriam ironically,  I wonder about Fred and Mabel. Why was he writing from South Africa? Did they ever meet? Did they read Tennyson to one another?  And what might that have led to?  Did the bright young maths student ever read his prize: did he die on the western front within the year.  Sad letters someone left inside a book saying Dad had died: the shopping list that makes me wonder what was being cooked that night; the scribbled love poem on the flyleaf;  the explosive “nonsense”  with three exclamations marks and “news to me” in the margins of a biography.  The strange calculation which reaches no conclusions.

Books pass through lives, are lived with, sometimes loved,  sometimes tokens of love or remembrance,  valued beyond their price or content, until they come to rest here, temporarily. They will eventually move on.  

Magic. 

Beware of Drown!

Headline in the Gold Coast Bulletin 11/02/2013 (p4):

Tears for Drown Victim

So if you come to the coast, beware of Drown. Not sure if it's The Drown, or A Drown, or whether there are secret gangs of Drown, made up of many drowns, prowling the beaches, kicking sand in the faces of puny weaklings, intimidating topless bathers and making the surfers nervous.

The next time any journalist or politician starts to bang on about the failure of literacy in schools they should be locked in a room with a year's supply of Gold Coast Bulletins and not allowed out until they have shown they can explain and correct all the errors.

Australian Poetry LTD strikes back:Poetry to enter schools!

The latest news from Australian Poetry LTD,  announcing amongst a host of other, no doubt valuable initiatives:           

Mentorships – A new range of mentorships will be offered to provide one-on-one guidance for serious poets.

School workshops – A range of workshops for both students and teachers will bring poetry into schools.

I stopped at "serious poets". Like the term "emerging writer" it makes me laugh, but then I suspect that means I'm not a serious poet, but I was truly bedazzled by the thought that Australian Poetry LTD,  in its evangelical zeal,  is about to "bring poetry into schools".

This may come as a surprise to most English teachers and their students who were under the (obviously misguided) impression it was already there? 

The Illustrated Rough Spun to Close Weave: the Bunting Tapes

"After sixty years of fairly good work without pay, I haven’t even a house of my own to die in.”  

Bunting, at 79, describing conditions "an honest poet must expect".

The Bunting Tapes

(With thanks to Richard Swigg and Don Share)

A northern voice insists we hold to windward.

So late in the season, sleet on the dark,

clothes sodden, fingers swollen

fumbling familiar tasks

the craft shifts and squirms,

battering a hostile sea.

Tired eyes stare for the journey’s end.

Easier to turn and run with the tide.

Easier to find a safe haven now.

Easier to wait for a favourable wind.

And when is the wind ever right

for the stars you choose to steer by?

From 'Rough Spun to Close Weave', available from Ginninderra press: http://www.ginninderrapress.com.au/poetry.html

A Strange Thing Happened at the Book Launch.

No, people didn’t rush to buy books. 

I’d read a poem called ‘Not just a broken token song”. I hadn’t had time to explain why I don’t like such songs but the poem is a light hearted criticism of them.

So reading over, standing at the table with the books for sale, doing the usual  smile and greet. A man approaches the table, stands directly in front of me, picks up a copy of the book, starts thumbing through it.

“The word whore trips off your tongue?” he said or asked. It was hard to tell.

I was too baffled by this opening to do anything except gold fish impersonations.

“Yes, he says, still thumbing through the book, I see you’ve used it again .”

I think I muttered something about contexts. 

“Well”, he says, “you’re the poet”, and dropping (tossing?) the book back on the table, exits.

Leaving  aside how rude such behaviour is, and all the clever things I thought of saying  a week later,  I’ve been trying to imagine what he thought he was doing. 

So let us assume he was an educated, rational human being.  This was, after all, an event in an academic writing conference.  He obviously objected to a word (ok, that’s not entirely rational in my book but let’s run with it) and he felt strongly enough to want to police his little patch and make his unhappiness known.  But there was no attempt to enter into any kind of dialogue, no attempt on his part to explain what/why/;  no effort at all to even make his point clearly.

I was obviously not worth the effort of an explanation.  So exactly what I was supposed to do with his outrage remains a mystery.

Leaving aside the specific Incident, and all the clever things I thought of much later, it also seems emblematic of a growing failure to read poem as poem.   It’s an extreme version of the “ideological reading”. 

As a writer I choose words in context, to produce an effect in context:  I believe it is possible to give words to a character to signal that this character is speaking and behaving in a way I am criticising.  (This is exactly what’s happening in the poem in question).  I’m interested by  attitudes and opinions  that aren’t mine and poems seems a good place to explore them.

But if poem isn’t read as poem, as something made, and the writer not given credit for the time and thought that goes into its making,  if the default reaction is to pick whatever seems unacceptable without stopping to consider how the words are working, then what’s the point of writing a poem and putting time into its construction?

There are people who wonder at my lack of enthusiasm for publication….. 

The illustrated Rough Spun To Close Weave #2: The Stone

From "Talking Nothing to the Stone".

This simple, ugly plaque records that sometime in the fourteenth century,

the date depends upon which source you use, Bolingbroke and Mowbray

didn’t fight a duel. My favourite stone, in all that’s left of Gosford Green,

beside new plastic swings, designed so no child breaks a bone.

The illustrated Rough Spun to Close Weave. #1

The title comes from the plaque at the base of this statue.

The statue is called the Coventry Boy. He's supposed to represent all the boys of the city. I wanted to put him in Lady Godiva and Me but whenever I tried to imagine his voice,  all I could hear was a petulant mumble that he'd left his house and forgotten to put both shoes on...