Last Saturday was a wonderful day! Thank you the great staff at Southwater Library, and also West Midlands Readers’ Network. Southwater Readers’ Day involved sharp-witted teenagers writing a Doctor Who radio play with Birmingham-based writer William Gallagher; Shrewsbury Poetry Stanza came over for the occasion and performed at the foot of Southwater’s escalators, drawing audiences who came racing back for later pop-up poetry readings; Jake Evans the storyteller led a group of skilfully bewitched children and parents on a Story Walk – and William Gallagher rounded off the day with his fabled Get Writing workshop, in which he demonstrates to participants how very distractable they really are.
I sat and typed on my vintage 1932 Good Companions typewriter, which clatters. I made a start on a Giant Poem for Southwater Library, and encouraged interruptions from library-goers. Lots of people stopped by and added lines to the poem. Here it is, after I took it home and re-jigged it just a bit. A paen to the Book. Let’s hear it for libraries!
A Giant Southwater Poem
Just a giant’s stride from The Wrekin,
at either end of the escalator –
here’s a book hoard. Browse.
Stray. Chase the black
and white across the page.
For each page sighs, where figments
of our words slip through the lines.
Here’s fantasy and fact, romance
and fiction, sit and read,
escape away and out of here
to there. Books are a window
for those that read. Be
surrounded by books, and coffee:
Heaven. Save a minute, here
or there, and fill a cup
with time to open up,
to drink in words, to hold
a world of thoughts from off the page.
You’ve lived through centuries of war,
of loss and love; you’ve been to places
that you’ve never seen:
language is a time machine.
And books is knowledge, think
of all the knowledge
in one single book.
It’s really connecting, all the histories,
all the stories. You find out
where you come from,
who you are.
Pages back, the giants scrapped
on Ercall and The Wrekin:
but now you bookmark
sofas in the library,
reach for words
that flutter carelessly
across the verse.
Don’t bend the corners –
flex your mind. Read
cover to cover,
under cover of night,
or under the sun.
Read in front of the fire,
read out in the shed.
Read in bed.
Made with many voices on Southwater Readers’ Day
Saturday 11 April 2015
with Jean Atkin
Southwater Reads 