Itinerancy (cont.)

York. City of walls, tea shops, bridges, cobblestones, and, er, not much in the way of local news, it appears from the ‘hot off the press’ sign our librarian caught on her way to her latest library installation. . .

. . . Which was a racecourse. With wonderful signs reminding Gentlemen they are required to wear a shirt and tie in the Enclosures. If only everything was as smartly enclosed eh? Anyway. Being billed as the 'uber strict' itinerant poetry librarian in the programme, we thought it best to rise, or perhaps, more likely, fall to the challenge . . . thus not only did the YLAFestival find us banning on the spot one new member for an offensive hairstyle (as well as telling over half the other new members they had borderline offensive hairstyles, which strictly speaking, even if we’d had the chance to not actually be strict, they really were borderline), we also refused membership to 2 likely souls on the grounds of not enough immediate enthusiasm, and were similarly rude to another new member who wanted to swap her free haiku for another one. Static on a stall on the Friday, Saturday saw us fully itineranted and carting around our new mini wheel-able poetry trolley, plus miniature suitcase with ‘OFFICE’ sign stuck on the front. We also affixed ‘LIBRARY & ARCHIVE’ and ‘OPEN/CLOSED’ signs to the front of our librarian suit and generally itineranted around the racecourse convention centre with portable poetry trolley looking mean, stern and, well, thoroughly strict. It seemed to work. Especially when wearing a 'CLOSED' sign on your person and smoking a fag outside, which meant we appeared so intimidating and strict that it seemed people did not even dare talk to us, let alone try and sign up. So. Job done. In the strictest sense of course. End of day’s takings? Well. It seems, even when we turn down members we are still fighting them off. A total of twenty-eight new members signed up in two days: it may well be a record membership uptake in terms of timescale, but it aint quite enough to take the total membership crown. It does mean however, that York storms into joint second place with Prague in the library membership stakes. Blimey. Didn’t see that one coming. But then again, you can’t always anyway, can you?

York Library Members. Well done chaps and chapesses.

This weekend was also a speedy affair for our librarian as she had to travel 500 miles in 24 hours, equalling a median librarian speed of 20.83 recurring miles per hour between Saturday 19.40 hundred hours and Sunday same time. We left York, spent the night in Brixton then had an afternoon in Norwich broadcasting librarian radio then made it back to Brixton for bedtime. All in day’s work for the Itinerant One. Oh yes. Things seems less visible when one travels at the speed of librarian light anyhow.

We will soon be itineranted in London. We promised the Circle Line tube and we keep our promises, stay tuned for details. In the meantime, here is some visual stuff (especially for Kelly):

There are newts in Brixton in October

Norwich. Friendly place. Or . . . how to get rid of a city in one go . . .

Peterborough newsagents. Friendly place East Anglia.

Norwich has a church for every week. That be at least 52 last time I counted

In St. John Maddermarket church in Norwich . . .

. . . Our ByeByeLaws are currently concealed

They have nice tombs there too

Most of all about Norfolk though, we love the sky

Notting Hill Carnival . . . we couldn’t resist

Jose enthusiastically endorses our project at Notting Hill

The Carnival in action

The kittens under our current couch we are surfing on

Current library membership as of right now! Yeah!

Plus more sound editing is still under way, get ready for Prague, Vienna and Budapest audio to be hitting the site ASAP. In the meantime, you can also check out what the hell people have been writing about our librarian. Yes. People have been writing about us. Crazy we know. Check out what The Guardian newspaper (UK) wrote or BCN Week, Barcelona’s very own cultural weekly paper (Edition 12). And we swear our librarian is hard at work. She is in no way taking an extended tea break now she is back on English soil. . . she may however exploit the fact that the Circle line tube means she can set up her poetry library all day and attempt to sign up the rest of London to the poetic cause, all for just the purchase of a one day travelcard (zones 1 - 4 we thinks). Stay tuned for pictures!

Meanwhile, inbetween sound-editing . . .

. . . we have also managed to update the Europe ConVerses Google Earth map we originally made of our journey. So take a look at our all new annotated and updated version here.

We are sound editing. This may take a while.

London & Library = At least 5 GBP to step out your door = Cous Cous for librarian dinner (again)

Where we are at

Where there’s poetry there’s normally not many people . . .

Today’s poetry library book selection

Our signs in English for the first time . . .

Our librarian travels by boat back to the UK as A. poetry library too heavy for plane; B. UK air travel a total mess and C. Librarian paranoid about library going missing if got a hold of by baggage staff

Nice to know there is a plan somewhere . . . even if it is sealed and a bit rusty

The Poetry Society Cafe in London . . .

. . . is a little empty. Or at least, it was when our librarian turned up for her first shift of the day there, yesterday (Wednesday 16th August) from 2pm - 8pm. Very few merry poetic souls even dared drift through the door to sample the cafe’s delightful cakes and drinks, let alone take the opportunity to peruse a poetry library (and a travelling one at that). Oh well. I guess the fact that it is a Poetry cafe does indicate that, much as the rest of the genre, it’s of interest to a minority audience (otherwise known sometimes as a mug’s game). Things heated up however a little later in the day, and we did manage to bag two whole new London members, so it wasn’t all emptiness and ennui. Taking the advice of the cafe staff however, we are going to do 4pm - 8pm shifts, as they reckoned that more people came later in the day. This is why it is now past 2pm and we are not there yet but instead posting on our blog. We have changed our times. So, from 4pm til 7pm TODAY (Thursday - we have an evening engagement that infringes and shaves off our last hour unfortunately) and then 4pm until 8pm on Friday you can catch up and sign up. We will also post pictures and get some of that damn audio editing going on, now that we are located in the same environment for at least 4 days (yippee! No lugging the entire library for at least 48 hours to foreign places!). And it is looking likely that the next library installation will be in Norwich in the near future. Stay tuned for further full details! In the meantime, total library membership now stands at 141, with members in Amsterdam, Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Budapest (winning with 34 members in total), Paris, Barcelona and London. And we are open to offers of other visits - so if you desperately need a travelling poetry library in yjavascript:void(0)our shed, school, taxi or town, get in touch today!

A one way ticket to the UK for tomorrow please. Thanks.

So folks, the London library installation is on. Go go go!

An excerpt from our onsite report for Radio Ruigoord at Landjuweel on August 13th

A poet reading on Friday night (11th August) in the Dichter tent

It’s that shiny suit trio we loved so much playing Teenage Dirtbag in the middle of a field in Holland!

This band rocked. We will try and find their audio we recorded at Landjuweel too

The noises we recorded coming from this tent sounded interesting also!

These Dutch people eh? A sense of humour in all weathers

And as we promised back in our Barcelona post, now that we have a more stable environment (i.e. not in a tent in a field in Holland somewhere - though we are still somewhere in Holland we might add) here are the pictures from our installation of the library at Hibernian books . . . in Barcelona. Last week. Wow. It seems like last year after all the Ruigoord radio, mud and mess. And with our additional Landjuweel new library members, it seems our current Library Membership total has now risen to. . . tan tan ta raaah . . . where is the trumpet we recorded when we need it . . . 139. Can we make it to 140 fresh poetry souls? Very likely actually, since don’t forget, this week we are heading on over to The Poetry Society Cafe at 22 Betterton Street, London, where we will be installed, library, librarian, and likely a dash of mud, from 2pm onwards on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 16 - 18th August. Do join us. We think you’ll like it.

The librarian goes off duty for a spot of lunch

Librarian in situ at Hibernian books

Where we were at

Our library selection for the day

What have Hibernian got on their poetry shelf?

Two new library members share poetry. Ah

The owner of this haircut has left a comment on our blog re their library banishment. The haircut is still banned. They are our rules. But this does mean we can interpret them. So. Banned member in Barcelona, your haircut is banned. You are not. Feel free to make your way over to our upcoming London installation where your library membership is still valid

Ray from Hibernian books at work. Or playing solitaire

Can you tell we like signs?

And we post them everywhere we can*

* Fly-posting at Otradovice station, Prague

‘How to join a library’ - our Spanish sign

Don’t forget we have some good poetry to borrow

. . . that other libraries don’t want . . .

One donation to our library by Hungarian poet Kalman Farago when we visited Budapest. Luckily, for our librarian, not in hardback

Obviously we have to get rid of all our belongings before we can fully poetically engage...

We have . . .
Books. . . A lefthanded electric guitar. . . Wednesday's moustache (previously worn). . . A well-loved steamer. . . What every poet should drink their tea from. . .
Belongings eh? They just kinda creep up on you and next thing you know you've gone a small child's blackboard, eight gin shot glasses, and a half full bottle of green chartreuse too far. But hey. There's an easy way out: get rid of them. I was going to give every item a 'chronicle' but me and a friend started cataloguing and after 4 hours we were as far on as...ooh...item number 37. Which incidentally was a polyester, herringbone weave, red shirt popular with merchant bankers in the 1970s. We gave up. Since this week I've had people coming round and realising they've always needed a lemon slice squeezer...my stuff is depleting. Slowly.

Welcome We Are Still in England

In anticipation of pending Poetry Podcast and Blogging Tour of Europe...we welcome YOU the Poets of Europe to get in touch and kick off our Exquisite Corpsical of a poetic dialogue. We have The Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland and Spain in our sights so far: please get in touch to let us know where you are in Europe so we can come and interview you and record your poems. We intend to wander far and wide, clouds & daffodils not necessary, but potentially quite nice.