Redhill Books Renegade Library kicks in to touch!

We're delighted to announce that we recently struck another voluble agreement in the highly irregularly regular library installation stakes, with the ravishingly redolent Redhill Books on Cortland Avenue.

This means that every Monday until we blow this joint, all you Valued Patrons of the Library [VPLs] -as well as you lovely Valued Non Patrons we've yet to meet- can come and get some weekly library love if this is your area.

Redhill you say, aint that a cool bookshop kinda like Dogeared and Phoenix? Yup. And not only that, but founder of all three bookshops, Kate, just happens to be a VPL who signed up back in 2007 on over at Dogeared Books, during our library installation at their regular reading series Babble On...here's what Redhill has to say for its self: "Named after Bernal's communist past, Red Hill has been experiencing a growth spurt to accommodate the store's big ideas. The small space nearly tripled in size and is poised to become not only a hub for great books but for community events like art openings, book clubs and writing groups." Or, indeed, a free travelling library of "lost & forgotten' poetry we dare say.

Don't forget Mission VPLs have Fridays, 4-10pm at The Marsh on Valencia, and Inner Richmondites gotsa Sundays, 1-6pm at the fruity Frankenart Mart at 515 Balboa...

...Hang on a ssssec, we feel some library stats coming on...what with Redhill Books in the bag, that means, you wonderful, whimsical "27,414" winning "San Franciscans" -are you a winner?- have officially got 15 hours a week of free travelling library experience in tha house. Word.

So come on down, and especially down, to our newest kid on the block:

Every Monday from 3 - 7pm! The Itinerant Poetry Librarian at Redhill Books!

Where's Redhill Books you say?

Why it's at 401 Cortland Avenue. In other words, here . . .


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Stop Press Special

Saturday 19th April from 6.30pm onwards we're giving an introductory Library talk and installing the Library at Redhill Books ready to rock on into our coming up Monday session . . . Come Join B4 We Travel On Yo!

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Meanwhile, Library-life has rioted. We've got words, pictures, video, audio, tales of renegading the Naughty Librarians Convention and much, much more. We shall meet again soon! Here's a sneak preview:

Frankenart Mart . . . Get Your Weekly Library Love!

We're delighted to announce that the Fab-U-lo-so-so frickin' cool gallery Frankenart Mart in the Inner Richmond district have decided they would be honoured to host one free travelling library of 'lost & forgotten' poetry, since they had such fun with us and the one-off installation we did back in June '07 - before we nipped off to other climes and climates North American.

We say . . . damn right!

So. We like 'em so much we're going to don our highly irregularly regular hat and aim to turn up and install our Library & Itinerant Poetry Librarian there pretty much EVERY Sunday we have left here. Yes. We said have left, since come December folks, we're hip-hop-skip-jumping back to that place known as the European Union, so that the folks that joined there in 2006 can get a chance to get their library borrowing privileges back. So, you'd best come along and borrow the rest of our stock you'd yet to get your hands on in the first place when you came and joined, or come along and sign up if you aint been yet, plus the plethora of newly acquisitioned items from Portland, Seattle & Vancouver that came our way in July and August will be out in the collection too.



So look out for us starting this Sunday, 16th September, from 1-6pm. We're then there pretty much every Sunday from 1 - 6pm until December unless we write otherwise (for starters on Sunday September 30th we'll be at the Gandhi Birthday Celebration event with the Library rather than here, just so you know!)

Here's a map to get you to us:


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To the Library and Beyond! Tally-ho!

San Francisco . . . We Back in Business Baby!

So we have landed back in SF.


After a delightful, debonair departure of 2 months, from the ole SF base, and crikey, it looks like you missed us San Francisco, as even though 1 in every 4000 of you good citizens is already a carded-up member of our library, we've already had people bangin' on the door to get the poor Librarian outta the bed she just got in to (and which aint even hers) to kick start the SF Library programme all over again. Sheesh. Give the girl a break! Or not. Not to worry, as we are already on the case, and sorting out our latest SF installation venues, so you can look forward to another session at the library very soon. It is looking more than likely that we will be able to reprise our highly irregularly regular weekly installation slot at The Marsh Theatre cafe, and we also hope to start up a new similarly styled slot at Frankenart mart, as well as our habitual mix of off-the-cuff up-outta-nowhere Library By Stealth^p™ versions which you'll need to check back here to find out about, as per The Way We Work!

We do, however, already have one first date for your library diary, which is:

The 2nd Annual Gandhi Birthday Poems & Performances For Peace hosted by Diamond Dave Whitaker and Arnie Passman. The event also features poetry, music, and dance, and you can come sign up for the open mic. It's all at the Gandhi statue, east of the Ferry Building (Embarcadero at Market). It is also all free. As we are too. Sunday 30th September, 1-6pm.

Come Join Before We Travel On^p™!

In the meantime, while you whittle down the hours until we launch into San Francisco Library mayhem, here are some visual treats . . .


The statue commemorating Canadian soldiers in past conflicts at the old Canadian Pacific Railway station in Gastown, Vancouver BC


The Vancouver BC water and skyline



Time-lapsed while we waited for a BC bus late one early Canadian morn


Graffiti & Mural art: Vancouver BC style




Our Library - minus Librarian - installed at The Gaff Gallery


While the San Francisco Center For the Book [sic American spelling pah!] . . .


. . . this weekend held a Steamroller lino cut and print party


which produced these cool . . .


. . . lino prints!

Sweet! We ♥ SF!

Inbetween installing our Library & Archive . . .

. . . we are so Library & Archive obsessed that we actually help out at another one . . . The Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives, which is based at San Francisco State University. Every week we head on over there and quiz the various bodies who work there about their activities & archives, suck their poetry brains for library, archive and poetry related detritus, and run their Myspace account, blithely sending off friend requests to poets dead and alive who already exist in their vast archive and collection of recordings – or indeed you if you like. Occasionally we also make a cup of tea for ourselves and make sarcastic remarks to the intern aka Lizzy, who seems to appreciate this (or is very good at hiding it anyway if not). Here are some pictures of their stuff:

The Poetry Center's Equipment (some in use, some out of present use):

The Poetry Center's Catalogues, in varying years, formats and shades:

John Ashbery: The Master Tape

Duncan Oppen - The original Reel to Reel

San Francisco Top-of-the-Library-Pops!

OK! So. You haven't heard from us in a few weeks not because A. we are lazy or B. we dropped our computer on the floor and it doesn't work anymore or C. a passing seagull pecked our fingers to shreds so typing four syllables takes about nine weeks, but because D. we've been locked in a dark room for rather too long, editing audio, editing video, writing code type assignations, chewing our cuticles, and inbetween allowing ourselves only to see the light of day (oh light! oh sun!) when we went out and about to install the library. Which. Ee Gads! We seem to have managed to do so many times in the last seven days that we've actually gone and broken another record. Ahem. The thing is, since we didn't post for a leetle while, you don't actually know about the first recooooooord breaaaaa-KER! Well. Better tell youse then.

Actually, if you are at-all-together-enough, you will have noticed this post's heading. Which kind of gives you a big FAT hint about the first record broken. Yes indeedy. San Francisco has officially nipped the arse of Norwich and Budapest and stormed into first place in our Top-of-the-Library-Pops Membership Chart. You actually achieved this, by no means small, feat, officially on March 29th at the Babble On reading series at DogEared books, where a chap called Hugh became SF member 35, clearing the Norwich-Budapest joint-34-members-winning-hurdle immediately. We know we'd promised to forehead stamp whoever no.35 was, but Hugh was such a nice chap, and a little bashful it seemed, so we thought launching a full librarian stamp swoop at him might not only discourage all other bodies in the building from signing up, but also, quite probably cause him to faint too. So we held off. We'll get one of you yet though. Anyhow. Babble On saw us score four new members by the end of the evening's event, then we skiphopjumped it on over to 16th & Mission street, where we actually secretly set up on the street and signed up one new member at around 11pm, just outside the BART station. The next day, of course, saw our highly irregularly regular slot at The Marsh, where we bagged 3 members;



this was then followed a week later with a Marsh repeat, another 3 members again signing up. Sunday 8th April saw us install the library and librarian over on Shotwell Street in someone's private house. One banned member for an offensive hairstyle; one minor library infraction on behalf of a dog; said banned member's re-admittance after petitioning the library; and a staggering nine members later,



. . . we legged it on out to another installation. Friday 13th April, and our Librarian is beginning to flag a little, but she still manages to fit in two installations in one day, busing it to 'The Sequoias' Residential Complex and signing up some of our favourite member-types: senior citizens, courtesy of the April San Francisco Browning Society's meeting.



7 new members, a cup of tea, and a delicious small cupcake later, we were off and on over to our regular Marsh slot where seven members also were forthcoming. That just left us with Sunday 15th April, where we finally got out of town a little and headed on over to Pegasus Books in downtown Berkeley. Where six new members got with the library programme.



So. That leaves just the adding up. Lemme see. . . Blimey.

San Francisco, you've now got . . . a total of . . .


73 frickin members! ROCK!

And the second record broken being: 29 of those Libraried-up lovelies joined all in one week.

You see. This is why we aint writ nuffin ere innit. We iz Librarian-nn-nn-in-in-ing-ggg. Aggh. Etc.

And why we leave you now with some pictures and recorded audio, as we still haven't quite recovered yet from those dark days in doors to function totally verballytastic. Yet.

The Mission murals alley

powered by higher beings

Outside a church door on a windy night. Recorded live outside the Unitarian Center Church, inbetween a poetry reading by David Shapiro & Joseph Lease on April 5 2007 in San Francisco, around 8pm

Our office sign at Pegasus Books

The Library installed at Pegasus Books

Library stamps

powered by SEAGULL

This seagull barking and squeezing a squeaky plastic buddha doll. Recorded live out on a roof of the 5th floor of the HUM building at SFSU around the 1st or 2nd week in April 2007

And . . . continuing our ever-popular item 'Weird crap left outside our house this week' in the last three weeks it has been. . .

This really is the crap left right outside our house, week in, week out. We normally find it walking back to open our front door after a hard day's night's library session. The Mission Rules! Bye!

Till next time boys and girls. Come Join Us!