We back in business baby!

Alrighty. One bed. Check. One poetry library still intact after hefting over half of Barcelona to find said new bed. Check. Venues for installing poetry library. Check. Let’s go! So, first up our librarian will be donning her suit and whipping out her signs, washing line of poems and 30 new titles for ye Barcelona citizens at Elephant bookshop, Creu Dels Molers, 12, 08004 BCN (metro poble-sec), on Sunday August 6th from 2pm until 8pm. Then on Monday and Tuesday we will be at Hibernian bookshop, Carrer Montseny, 17, BCN (metro fontana), from 4pm until 8.30pm on Monday and from 10.30am until 2.30pm on Tuesday. Then we are legging it over back to Amsterdam by train (as we cannot fly as the rucksack full of poetry books is way toooooooooo heavy) to go and do a live radio show at Landjuweel Festival at the awesome Ruigoord site we were at back when we started this whole shebang at the beginning of June. You will be able to listen to our live feed from their site when we start on air from Wednesday or Thursday next week! Rock on people! In the meantime, here is a little Gaudi, a little audio, and a little graffiti to prove that as well as finding beds in 12 hours we also shift our ass when it comes to our other work. And just before we go we have to say a little word of thanks to Jillian who helped save our ass with the bed shenanigans yesterday, and while we are at it, Frank, who is letting us use his laptop right now to update our blog. Thanks dudes!

Gaudi’s Casa Batlla

We are really diggin’ the graffiti round here folks

Barcelona Street guitar

Imposible . . . vale?

. . . so we had one fiesty ready to rock librarian this morning, just raring to go and jump on out onto the Barcelona streets and set up today’s library installation at Horiginal cafe, restaurant and seller of poetry books for some random reason. Anyway, we made it on down to the place, and took the respectful step of going in first to alert the staff to our presence, reminding them that we had been given permission on Tuesday to come and do what we do. But there seemed to be a problem . . . porque ahora . . . es imposible. No reason, not much of an apology to our sweaty librarian, already in suit and with today’s selection of thirty titles sitting on her back in the mini-library rucksack, just a shrug of shoulders and that was it. Apart from a suggestion we could set up on the Calle. Well we know we can set up the street Mister, we can do that anytime, it’s just a little dirty and rather far to stoop for potential library members to scrutinise our books, so gee thanks but not today amigo. So we walked out. And headed on over to Placa Bonsucces, which is just round the corner, has a load of cafes where people hang out, and is a much better passageway for ye folks roamin’ around possibly interested in a free poetry library. So we set up on a small wall cum steps archway affair, in the shade (just) . . . and it seems like a good place. So manana, instead of el stupido Horiginal we will be here, same times (2 - 8pm) so come and find us! And apologies to anyone who came to Horiginal today and looked for us, but as we set up straight away somewhere else we couldn’t update our address info . . . and epsecially sorry to Rudolpho the Chilean poet who we met yesterday and who said he would see us today – come to Placa BonSucces mi amigo and we will sign you up inmediatamente! We also took some more pictures today of this damn hot city. Here we go:

More Barcelona graffiti

Biblioteca Jaume Fauster, near where we currently live

On La Rambla, people ‘dress’ up for the tourists . . .

. . . in the hope of getting a few euro cents . . .

While our librarian drooled over this 1941 typewriter with its own wooden box

Her friends have been doing some photoshop fun . . .

Dresden Street Art

So, we spent our first official Poetry Librarian Day in Dresden today. We are set up outside the bookshop Buchhandlung Im Kunsthof, owned by Christian Bahnsen, who we went along to speak to as soon as we arrived in Dresden yesterday. He was a little sceptical . . . or shall we say . . . dubious at first I think, but after we kept repeating the word free and library plus the fact that we promised to remain outside in front of his shop, this seemed to do the trick and he agreed. So we arrived and set up at 11am. At around 4pm we had the amazing total of ZERO new members. Jeez. These Dresden residents just didn't seem to be down with the whole free poetry library thang. We had by this point however talked to ourselves quite a lot in our head, finished our book we bought from Dave at Books in Berlin - ‘Amy and Isabelle’ by Elizabeth Strout, smoked seven cigarettes, sweated far too much in our woollen librarian suit and eaten the sum total of an apple which was all we remembered to bring. Then our Dresden Hero Arrived. Andreas Schendel. He joined the library. He looked at our poetry books. He enthused about our touring library and collection of lost poetry. He showed us round Dresden and took us to a soup bar. And tomorrow he is bringing a real live Dresden poet to join the library and hopefully agree to talk to us too! Hurray for Andreas! We are burning a CD of one of our favourite band's music for him right now cos he was so great. So, here are some pictures of our Today in Dresden

We love the Dresden Graffiti/Street Art scene! We think it rocks. Andreas says his ‘male intuition’ reckons most of the drawings of people are by this Dresden graffiti chick. Who are you? Where in Dresden are you? Whatever. We love your work . . .