Seattle Joins the Library. Librarian Joins Teenagers For A Free Meal. Sweet.

So. We have been installed at the raucous, righteous Richard Hugo House these last few days.

Raucous, cos the House is hosting its annual teen scribe event, which has meant a gaggle or group or we thinks cacophony of teenagers, hanging out round the corner from us and scribbling away all week in their notebooks a series of words which appear to be shock horror awfully like poetry. Ye gads. It's infecting us all! We had nothing to do with it . . . honest guv'nor. Mostly we've been ignored by the posse, except for the lovely young lady called Marcy who wandered over finally today to check out what this weird thing in the corner might be. So we promptly signed her up. She then dug the library enough to go off and find her own chair, which she then pulled over to us, borrowed an item from today's selection out on our table, and proceeded to sit and read. And since these guys get fed everyday our librarian has been getting a feed too. Alright! Four members on Friday makes it a medium day, except for what happened next:

Richard Hugo House also houses . . .



. . ZAPP the awesome zine library, which means that it's the kind of place our highly irregularly regular library member, Simone from Leipzig (who joined in Portland last month - see our previous blog posts for details) would more than likely want to check out. And just as we're packing up and telling Jesse on reception about our biggest library fan, who should walk in the door . . . but Simone. All the way from Portland. Who decided to visit ZAPP and then happened to check our blog on her way over to the House and discovered . . . her favourite library was also there! That's what we call Library Karma. And we love it. Nice one Simone.

Wednesday & Thursday at the House were much more chaotic, and saw us sign up 9 and 8 members respectively to the library, including a good number of the good folks who work there, as well as acquisitioning a new library item, after running through our Acquisition Policy with the chap who donated the item, while informing him that the Library's "Policies of selection, retention, disposal, misplacement and deterioration reflect the current state of the world."

Both days also caught us dealing with one of the basic ByeByeLaws of the library, namely #5a, which we'll take the opportunity to quote from ourselves here:
"5. Except with the consent of a library officer, no person shall:

a) who is offensively clean in person or in dress, or who is suffering from an offensive disease or hairstyle, enter or use the library."

It seems that Seattle does appear to suffer from an overpreponderance of offensive hairstyles.

We've caught two of you, blatantly out and about in the open, and attempting to gain library membership, which was given and then immediately withdrawn on the basis of said offensive hair. We then made you alter your hairstyles to what we deemed were mildly inoffensive variations upon the follicle theme, rescinded the ban and re-admitted you to the library. We're quite worried as we have a WHOLE ANOTHER WEEK to go in Seattle, and at this rate. Well. To put it mildly. That's potentially a whole lotta more offensive hair to go. Indeed.

Anyway. 72 hours of library mayhem equals =

Yay Seattle! You could slide into third place in the Library charts at this rate!

Meanwhile. Inbetween installing our library . . .







We squeezed in a spot of flyposting . . .


And

Saw

A lot

Of the Water

Around here



while remembering the cyclists of Portland . . .

Antwerp Joins Library. Librarian Joins Dots.

So. Our intrepid Itinerant One is called over to assist in the NACHT VAN DE POWEZIE in Antwerp. This consists of taking part in the all night poetry reading as well as walking around signing up members to the library with our little brown suitcase. It all took place at TNIEF BADHUIS, BURCHTGRACHT 14, which for those with inadequate belgianflemishdutchtypelanguage skills means The Bathhouse, 14 Burchtgracht, Antwerp. Which really was a former bath house, currently an awe-inspiring four storey squat. The Librarian arrived in the daylight, and so was able to help decorate the place. Which was a slightly sisphyian task at some points. Especially when helping cook Tomas try and staple gun gold brocade to the ceiling while balancing on a step ladder and the staple gun keeps breaking open and thus losing its staples every second shot. Everything finally got hung in place though and it looked beautiful. Several hours, a bowl of north african soup cooked by Tomas, a finished copy of Nicholson Baker’s ‘Double-Fold&rsquo, and a free beer later, two hundred people came to the squat to see all these poets and experimental musicians perform: H.J. Claeys, Hans Plomp, DJ Bert Lezy's experimental drawing space, Aixia, De Antistresspoweet, Chi-Trung Nguyen, Oam Boca Sista, Yasuhiro Yotsumoto, Barry Fitton, Mario Salis, Louise Landes Levi, Claude Lammens, Sara Wingate Gray, Peter Waugh, Irene, Ernest Marechal, Marleen van Joolen, Max Lerou, Pom Wolff, Freek Lomme, Xavier Roelens, Verde Ben-Kiki, Pieter Hemeryck, Richard Steegmans, Luk Paard, Cralan Kelder, Gijs Ter Haar, Manu Bruynserade, Stoffel Hendrickx, Els Dams, Stijn Vranken, Marc Tiefenthal, Artiestencollectief JA!, Sacha De Backer, Kaatje Wharton, Wosky, Waxinelichtje + Mariette, Bart Van Peer, Didi de Paris, Sven De Swerts, Frans Vlinderman, JMH Berckmans en Kris Verdonck, Bart Van Peel, Philip Van Beek, Peter Holvoet Hanssen, David Van den Bosch, de Transformateurkens, Daan Goor, Hilde Droogné, , Gunther De Wit, Sandra Verheij, Tania Jooris, De Jazzpoëtici, Pisteffo en Fronk, Bart De Wildeman, Herman van Lunen, Maarten Redstar, Joran Van Windt, Wil Fraikin, Het Venijnig Gebroed, Danny Danker, David Boulée, Nico Rubens, Mario Janssens, Emile Wouters, Enak Kortebeek. It was amazing. We will be getting pictures sent over soon, and will post them up. Highlights included the Artiestencollectief performing their brand of improvised sound and vocal compositions while projecting live images onto a screen on the back wall - this was also in the still-tiled and mosaiced former bath area with fittings still intact - (and we had a nice chat with Maarten from this group too), Peter Waugh’s sound poetry, the Pyromancer Poet we saw back in June in Ruigoord, this time dressed head to toe in English Gentleman tweed rather than covered in fire . . . and much more until the small twee wee hours. The Librarian made it to bed at 4am. We are not sure when the event actually stopped itself . . .

Important Library Note

New Antwerp Library member Xavier Roelens. You borrowed ‘The Heart of the Ancient Balcony&rsquo by Glynn Pursglove and DID NOT RETURN SAID ITEM. This is in breach of too many of our ByeByeLaws to list here without scaring you (e.g. for reference see the one about when you are liable to pay off our librarian’s student loan). Please get in touch to return our book. Best wishes. The Itinerant Poetry Librarian.

Where we performed: The Bathhouse

The front of this space. If only all houses looked similar . . .

‘Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal, the Cathedral of Our Lady’ in Antwerp

Statue of Brabo

According to folklore, the city got its name from a legend involving a mythical giant called Antigoon that lived near the river Scheldt, exacting a toll from those crossing the river. On refusal, the giant severed one of their hands and threw them into the Scheldt. Eventually, the giant was slain by a young hero named Brabo, who cut off the giant's hand and threw it into the river. Hence the name Antwerpen from Dutch hand werpen (hand-throwing). This is what my Belgian friends told me anyway. And Wikipedia says it too so it must be true. Hah.

Someone having a treasure hunt in Antwerp? We found these signs on the street. ‘Which Belgian city has a tram stop called Moscow’?

Het Steen - The Stone, Antwerp’s oldest building, built in 1200 - 1225, and previously known as Antwerp Castle

The Ship Musuem next to Antwerp Castle

The sky as we left Antwerp

What we like about Squats in Belgium: cool poster art

What we think of this particular squat

A Belgian film in directorial process at our departure lounge. What is going on?

Our Librarian gets to Trafalgar Square demos too . . .

& has friends who lose things after Halloween escapades . . .

We also did a reading at the Hopsack cafe while in Antwerp and got to hear poetry in Japanese, Dutch, English, French and probably Flemish. We’d like to say thanks to poets Louise Landes Levi and Yasuhiro Yotsumoto for donating copies of their poetry books to the library too. And finally we send librarian thanks to Frans and Nip who offered couch surfing Antwerp facilities and didn’t freak out too much when our librarian started to cough up some spots and dots of blood. Luckily, the Librarian has since been to the Doctor and does not have TB. Just a cough. We were a little worried seeing as one of our favourite poets is Keats and as ole Tennessee wrote ‘As a poet, I have a weakness for symbols’ . . . Doei!

Fully signed up Antwerp Library Members! Hurray!

Total Library Members as of today! As poet Salena Saliva Godden might say . . . She-Booooooooooom or as poet Barry Fitton might say . . . Hallelujah! Either way . . . We say, FUck yeAH!

Bye bye BCN

Well, we just finished our final Barcelona Poetry Library installation, at the wonderful Hibernian bookshop, which brings us to a total of 15 library members for Spain, not a bad total considering how much we got messed around by the first few places we wanted to install the library in. So, all things works out in the end - this is one BIG lesson we learned here in BCN, and we’re grateful. Thanks for the sun, sweat and lazy, ambling time. We also got interviewed by Barcelona’s very own english language newspaper, BCN Week, which will be out soon . . . and we just tried to upload our photos for today but this internet cafe is not playing the blogger pop-up window game very well, so you’ll just have to wait to see what we got up to today. And now we gotta run to squeeze the books into our rucksack, swap our sweaty suit for some travelling gear and hop on a train the hell outta here to Amsterdam, via Paris. So, one picture which did somehow manage to get through the stuck ether is our current library total. Although, it just got bumped up by one as we were packing up at Hibernian, so actually we are on 133 EU members, not 132, but we’ll sort* this out in the next couple of days and upload the rest of the pictures and more news when we find a more stable home than a railway carriage. Vale. Hasta Luego BCN . . . Amsterdam here we come! Venga! *sorted in Amsterdam 14.08.2006

Library members! Yeah!

Monday August 7, 2006 15.30 PM

Just before we set up Monday’s library . . .

. . . take a look at yesterday’s fun. And six new members takes us up to 125 signed-up personas! Go Barcelona go!

Where our library was yesterday . . .

Open at Frank’s

All Frank’s books

Our library selection for the day

Our librarian in situ

Yes. It’s Frank

The ladies at Frank’s place

The writing on Frank’s wall

A Spanish miaow

A Barcelona window ledge

And finally . . . our first offensive hairstyle of a new member. She got BANNED!