Borrowed Bookshelves 13

Books read by Ellen MacArthur on board Kingfisher during the 2001 Vendée Globe

National Maritime Museum, Falmouth, Cornwall

Arctic Events in Newcastle

In November the Lit & Phil in Newcastle-upon-Tyne will host two events as part of the series Quujaavaarssuk and the Queen of the Sea. The Lit & Phil is a venue full of character, which possesses - among other things - a mesmerising collection of early literature on the Arctic - I spent several months researching in the stacks on my return from Upernavik in 2010. 

Ice and the Imagination


Tuesday 4 November 6pm


FREE


This wintery workshop will take classic works of polar exploration and natural history from the Lit & Phil collection as a starting point for new writing about ice, snow and the environment. Poet Nancy Campbell will introduce work by contemporary writers on the subject and guide you through prompts to create your own poems and stories.

Seven Words for Winter: Arctic Poems


Monday 17 November 7pm


FREE


In this reading Nancy Campbell will evoke the atmosphere of ‘the most northern museum in the world’ on the remote island of Upernavik in Greenland. These poems describe the disappearing arctic language and environment and retell the colourful myths of the Inuit coastal community. The evening will open with readings of new work from writers who participated in the Ice and the Imagination workshop.

Numbers are limited so booking is advised for both these events.

Please contact The Lit & Phil, 23 Westgate Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 1SE
 

Tel: 0191 232 0192 

Email: library@litandphil.org.uk

Thanks to Arts Council England for supporting these activities

Borrowed Bookshelves 11

The Library of the Lloyd Hotel and Cultural Embassy, Amsterdam

Borrowed Bookshelves 10

Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam/ Amsterdam Public Library, the Netherlands

Borrowed Bookshelves 9

The library of T.E. Lawrence, Clouds Hill, Dorset

Stories from the Flood

This month I was a writer-in-residence for Words Across Northumberland, a project facilitated by Hexham Book Festival. Two writers, the novelist Susan Fletcher and I were stationed in parts of the region that have been severely affected by flooding in the last decade. Susan Fletcher recorded her experiences in Morpeth and I spent time in Rothbury, a small town in the Northumberland National Park. 

The River Wansbeck looked demure the day I arrived in Morpeth. It was hard to believe these waters could have caused such devastation a few years ago. But breakfasting in a cafe before starting work, I saw a gloomy forecast in the Mirror. 

The moorlands with their low population make the Northumbrian landscape one the most tranquil in the country (CPRE Tranquillity Mapping Report). I grew up in the region and have often gone walking in the hills. However, I've never travelled along its winding roads in a Mobile Library van, so I was excited about the opportunity to start my residency with a guided tour from the Northumberland Mobile Library Service. 

There are several Mobile Library services in Northumberland: the one I travelled with operates from Morpeth Library (which lost 20,000 books to flooding in 2008). Morpeth Library incorporates the Northern Poetry Library, one of my favourite haunts as a teenager. I was pleased to be back and it was satisfying to be able to leave one of my own books behind as a donation for their collection. 

Northern Poetry Library

The Mobile Version

The Mobile Library is much less spacious, but the space was found for a writer-in-residence, packed in among the books. Keith Bruce manoeuvred the hulking library - not unlike a New York taxi in colour, but far less agile - out of Morpeth, and drove over the moors towards Rothbury and up the Coquet Valley, stopping in each village. As he navigated the winding lanes and potholes Keith told me his own stories on flooding in the region. 

Easy Read

The Mobile Library is clearly an important service, especially for older people, as it brings fresh supplies of literature and a little kindly contact every fortnight. We also stopped at a number of schools, and managed to escape from the eager children with a few books still left in the van. I was lucky to get an insight into how the system works, not to mention having a beautiful ride on a bright summer’s day, past hedges bursting with blossom, cow parsley and campion. Mr Dixon, author of Upper Coquetdale (available from the Mobile Library) quotes a traditional verse:

If life were like a day in June,

                 And we had choice of England wide,

         Who would not spend an afternoon,

           And evening too, by Coquet-side.

A break for lunch at Harbottle

Stopping for squirrels

The River Coquet at Rothbury

Rothbury Library

After seeing the Coquet valley at its most idyllic, I was in for a shock in Rothbury next day - where the effects of the floods of 2008 can still be seen, five years on, in the building work on the bridge. 

As I listened to the people who came to the library to tell me their stories, it became clear that the floods have an enduring effect on daily life in Rothbury. While the disaster brought a friendly community even closer together, there are still challenges. Five years on, some old people still sleep in their clothes because they fear the waters will rise in the night and catch them unprepared. Some comfort is offered by a dedicated team of volunteer Flood Wardens who keep an eye on the river as it rolls down from the hills after heavy rain. I was very moved by the bravery the Rothbury residents showed as they told their difficult stories, refusing to be pessimistic or self-pitying.

Armstrong Cottages, one of the worst-hit buildings

Thank you to everyone who came and shared their experiences. Now comes the writing up – a poem based on the river, which will be published this autumn.

Many thanks to Keith Bruce, Claire Watson and Diane Wright, and the other staff of Northumberland Library Services, for making me feel so welcome and for sharing their stories too.

Words Across Northumberland

I have been appointed as a Words Across Northumberland Writer in Residence.

Stories from the Flood places a creative writer in two Northumbrian libraries, Morpeth and Rothbury. Both towns were affected by catastrophic flooding in 2008. Susan Fletcher (in Morpeth) and I (in Rothbury) will spend time meeting staff and visitors and creating a body of work on the themes of flooding and climate change. Having researched and written on these issues during recent residencies in Denmark and Greenland, I look forward to bringing a global perspective on climate change to the region of the UK where I grew up.

I will make an initial mobile library tour of the area on Wednesday 19 June, and will be meeting the public in Rothbury Library on 20 and 21 June.

Borrowed Bookshelves: 7

Books arranged by height on the shelves of the Icelandic Poetry Centre

in Siglufjörður.

Borrowed Bookshelves: 6

The bookshelf of Guðný Róbertsdóttir (teacher) and Örlygur Kristfinnsson 
(museum director) in Siglufjörður, Iceland.

An Oxford Alphabet

This winter the Bodleian Library collections have made their way from the inside to the outside of the Broad Street building during renovations. An abecedarium guide to the treasures of the library collections is displayed on temporary hoardings.

Although pedestrians do not seem to be taking much notice of the alphabet over their heads, I was curious to see which authors had made it into the Bodleian's select canon of twenty-seven. Shakespeare was there, of course - albeit under 'F' for 'FIRST FOLIO', but other choices were less conventional.

How has the great library solved the universal problem of the letter X? No surprise there: conveniently hidden behind a traffic light, X stands for ... X-RAY. 

The Sugar Mouse Examines The Writer's Books

Borrowed Bookshelves: 5

An collection of fine early printing found beside the Thames in Oxfordshire. The curious sugar mouse is provided courtesy of Abingdon Women's Institute.

Lochinver Library Swoop

Norman MacCaig was an avowed 'two-fag' poet. I wonder whether The Itinerant Poetry Librarian would have let him smoke even one while browsing her collections. One of the Bye Bye-Laws of the Itinerant Poetry Library states, with characteristic precision, 'No person shall smoke or strike a light in any part of the library set apart for the use of the public without the permission of the library officer, and except in any part thereof which is for the time being used as a smoking den or in which, when it is being used for an educational, cultural or other event under Section 20 of the Act, the Library Authority allows smoking.'

Such are the curious legalities that have been preoccupying the Librarian since 2006, when the Itinerant Poetry Library began 'travelling the world with a library of "lost & forgotten" poetry, installing the library and librarian and archiving the sound, poems and poetry of the cities, peoples and countries we meet'. No wonder the Librarian's back is a little stooped, or that her brow displays more lines than Milton's Paradise Lost.

Last Friday found the Library sharing the premises of the Highland Mobile Library Service, itself somewhat itinerant, but temporarily parked opposite the SPAR on Lochinver's main street. It was raining. As if taking a fashion cue from the gung-ho shooting parties in less metropolitan parts of Assynt, the Librarian's grey pin-stripe suit provided camouflage against the damp tarmac of the parking lot.



The rain-streaked doors slid open silently at my approach with institutional rectitude. I found myself signing up to the Library Bye Bye-Laws, without having read them, and then committing several infringements while perusing the day's display of books on the theme of 'Poetry In Languages That Trip Off The Tongue.' Did I dare to confess to not speaking Hungarian? I did not. Volumes of Modern Russian Poetry lay alongside Ancient Greek Love Poems. The Librarian looked a little flushed, having just delivered an impromptu educational session based on the latter to three young visitors.

While the books laid out to trip the tongues of Lochinver were relatively conventional in format, I was intrigued to read in the Bye Bye-Laws that the Library defines 'book' as 'any and every book, poem, journal, pamphlet, music score, manuscript, picture, print, poet, photograph, engraving, etching, deed, map, chart, plan, cheese sandwich, gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, mini disc, web page, pre-recorded tape, floozies, film and any other article of like nature.' What did the Librarian have in her suitcase?

The Library website details in full the complex and worthy aims behind its existence, the essence of which is 'the idea of poetry as a unique form of human communication, and thus a unique form of knowledge; and the idea of the public library as both recycling-knowledge space and civic space – concepts which we believe can also be used as models for sustainable growth in order to oust ourselves from the current cul de sac that is consumer-led, maximum profit-centred culture.' Hear, hear!

Borrowed Bookshelves: 4

Colin Campbell, Art Historian, Northumberland.

Above many shelves of scholarly works on Rembrandt, I found some light relief in the form of a six-volume 1877 edition of Robert Burns' works. Monday marks the 251st anniversary of Burns’ birth, and I'll be reciting his paean to ‘Scotch Drink’ over a haggis:

Food fills the wame, and keeps us leevin;
Tho’ life’s a gift no worth receiving,
When heavy-dragg’d wi’ pine and grieving;
But oiled by thee,
The wheels o’ life gae down-hill, scrievin,
Wi’ rattlin glee.

For those who prefer books to booze, here are some lines found scribbled in a musty volume of Shakespeare in the library of Burns' friend Cunningham:

Through and through th'inspir'd leaves,
Ye maggots, make your windings,
But O respect his lordship's taste
And spare the golden bindings.

Borrowed Bookshelves: 3

Emily Brett, Writer and Visual Artist, Hackney, London.

I found these much-loved Ladybird books lurking amongst Brett’s eclectic collection of literary and theological texts. Brett says, in testimony to the Ladybirds’ durability, “I loved the books’ feel: firm, droppable, difficult to rip the pages because the cover was so hard; and I loved the picture of the Ladybird in the top right corner.” She adds, “From the look of its legs I suspected that Ladybirds could crawl everywhere and everywhere they crawled there was a book about what they'd seen…”

The slim volumes are mostly educational; they alerted the young Brett to important concerns such as woodwork, pond life and pirates. Yet far and away her favourite was the story of Joan of Arc who saw visions of God in the sunlit fields. For a small girl who could still barely read, part of the appeal for Brett were the illustrations of the pious yet sassy saint-to-be and her surroundings. “The pictures of cows, bowls of soup, wooden tables, stone masonry, the church and battles, tell their own narrative, leading Joan from her village to her higher purpose. I remember particularly a picture of her holding up and dedicating her sword to a statue of the Virgin Mary. It seemed terribly noble and, in a way, glamorous. I realised there was much more to life than met the eye. I also loved the endpapers, with dark grey drawings and captions of important things, such as 'Crossbow-men', 'Joan in her armour', 'A Knight', etc.

“Joan’s story is so exciting. She's so brave and has such sensibility. On the cover there’s a picture of her riding a white horse in battle, in her glinting armour, cape flowing against the blue sky. It symbolised life as an adventure and a crusade... In summer there were lots of Ladybirds in the garden on a plant with tiny purple flowers and I liked counting their spots and calling them Joan.”

Borrowed Bookshelves: 2

Frances and Nicolas McDowall, proprietors of the Old Stile Press, have a complete set of the Chiswick Press Shakespeare in their library, minus a copy of The Tempest which found its way to my bedroom: 'All that is solid melts into air'.