Off The Shelf: A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse
4/5
()
About this ebook
Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and her friends across the country offer poems in praise of the magic of reading.
In Off the Shelf: A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy has commissioned a selection of the UK's most loved and lauded poets to each write a poem in celebration of books and bookshops - the worlds they hold, the freedoms they promise, and the memories they evoke. From a basement of forgotten books to the shelves of a cramped Welsh arcade, from the poetry corner of the local bookstore to the last bookshop standing in a post-apocalyptic world, these are poems that pay tribute to all the places that house the stories we treasure.
With poems from Carol Ann Duffy, Scottish Makar Jackie Kay, National Poet of Wales Gillian Clarke, as well as Clive James, Michael Longley, Don Paterson, Patience Agbabi and many more, this beautiful anthology is a heart-warming reminder of how books nourish us, save us, and inspire us.
Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy lives in Manchester, where she is Professor and Creative Director of the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her poetry has received many awards, including the Signal Prize for Children's Verse, the Whitbread, Forward and T. S. Eliot Prizes, and the Lannan and E. M. Forster Prize in America. She was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 2009 to 2019. Her many collections include Mean Time, Love Poems and The Bees, which won the Costa Poetry Award. Her writing for children includes Queen Munch and Queen Nibble, The Skipping-Rope Snake and The Tear Thief. She was made a DBE in the 2015 New Year Honours list. In 2021, she was awarded the international lifetime achievement award the Golden Wreath for her achievements in poetry.
Read more from Carol Ann Duffy
Sincerity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Collected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Standing Female Nude Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Answering Back: Living poets reply to the poetry of the past Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPolitics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe King of Christmas Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selling Manhattan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elegies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPablo Picasso's Noël Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTo the Moon: An Anthology of Lunar Poems Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Nature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrost Fair Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Empty Nest: Poems for Families Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAdvent Street Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChristmas Eve at The Moon Under Water Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Off The Shelf
Related ebooks
Monday or Tuesday & Other Stories: The Original Unabridged 1921 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Once Upon a Summer: A Folk and Fairy Tale Anthology: Once Upon a Season, #2 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Transitions Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5No Object Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A warm and snouting thing: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Travelling in the Dark Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSongs of Innocence and Songs of Experience Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tillable Land Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeing Alive: the sequel to Staying Alive Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Don't Touch Garden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Girl Goes Into the Forest Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Island in the Sound Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Face to Face: A Reader in the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paper Garden Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Yellow Heart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThis Afterlife: Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Abortion: a personal story, a political choice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWaiting for Bluebeard Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrom Waves, I Rise: A Collection of Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Past Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Messages: A National Poetry Day Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Emma Press Anthology of the Sea: Poems for a Voyage Out Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poet and His Book: The Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWe the Gathered Heat: Asian American and Pacific Islander Poetry, Performance, and Spoken Word Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDance by the Canal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInterval Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhy I Was Late Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLandfall 234: Aotearoa New Zealand Arts and Letters, Spring 2017 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sun and Her Flowers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf: A New Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pretty Boys Are Poisonous: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Just Kids: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Off The Shelf
5 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Off The Shelf - Carol Ann Duffy
In loving memory of Bernard Stone
and The Turret Bookshop
Off the Shelf
A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse
Edited by Carol Ann Duffy
PICADOR
Contents
Foreword
Last Bookshop in Britain – Patience Agbabi
Book Learning – Jo Bell
Open Book – Rachael Boast
Notes on Bookbarn International after a Visit; with a Questionnaire Answered by O and L – Sean Borodale
In Defence of Old Men Dozing in Bookshops – Colette Bryce
In a Cardiff Arcade, 1952 – Gillian Clarke
Contemporary Americans – Billy Collins
MacNaughton’s Bookshop – Peter Davidson
Beware the Books – Imtiaz Dharker
Without Prejudice – Edward Doegar
At the Minster Gate Bookshop – Maura Dooley
In the Drowned Bookshop – Carol Ann Duffy
The Secondhand Bookshop – Ella Duffy
Gathering – Ian Duhig
River Tigris, River Euphrates – Paul Farley
The Bookshop at the End of the World – Vicki Feaver
For My Wife, Reading in Bed – John Glenday
Lockyer’s – Paul Henry
The Argument of his Book – Robert Herrick
Apotheosis at the Signing Table – Clive James
G. & A. Bowden – Alan Jenkins
Silver Moon – Jackie Kay
Goodbye, Bargain Basement – Neetha Kunaratnam
The Wardrobe – Zaffar Kunial
We Lay Down a Story – Liz Lefroy
Note Taking – Liz Lochhead
Bookshops – Michael Longley
Blank Page Of First Old Book He Read – Glyn Maxwell
What Happens Nest – Helen Mort
Booked – Daljit Nagra
The Tilt – Mark Pajak
Bookshop – Don Paterson
The Girl Who Ate Books – Jean Sprackland
The Elements of Reading – James Sutherland-Smith
The Future of Books – Michael Symmons Roberts
Notes on the Art of Poetry – Dylan Thomas
Books – Katharine Towers
Bookeries – Kit Wright
Biographical Notes
Foreword
In June 2016, in a fortnight either side of the Referendum, the poets Gillian Clarke, Imtiaz Dharker, Jackie Kay and I travelled from Falmouth to St Andrews, via Wales, on a poetry tour, Shore to Shore, to celebrate the UK’s Independent Bookshops. At each event, we invited a poet associated with the area to perform alongside us – and were often upstaged. Our aim was to connect with readers, writers and, of course, our heroic booksellers, who are so vital to our communities. To support this venture, Picador published Off the Shelf, an anthology of specially commissioned poems about the joys of Bookshops.
On the original tour, we were disappointed not to be able to visit more cities, towns or villages with much-loved local Bookshops – so we made a vow that we would try to add more places another year. So here we are in 2018 – the meaning of Brexit as unclear as it was two years ago – back on the road: this time taking a different route and journeying from Penarth to Dunoon. It seemed an excellent idea to add some extra poems to our original anthology, so this new Off the Shelf contains some newly commissioned poems, alongside some old favourites of mine.
My thanks go to Camilla Elworthy and Kish Widyaratna at Picador; to all the poets who will be joining us on the road; to the Independent Bookshops who are helping to make this second venture possible; and, most importantly, Dear Reader, to you.
CAROL ANN DUFFY
Patience Agbabi
LAST BOOKSHOP IN BRITAIN
I won’t tell