I gifted myself poetry
a brief introduction to the 14 books in my 'to be read' pile & other thoughts on poetry
Buying books always feels like a treat, even though reading is an essential pillar of my life. It has always felt this way, but perhaps more so in an age where everything feels fragmented, atomised even, into discrete parts. Behaviourally, we’re more likely to listen to individual songs on Spotify now (perhaps found through curated playlists where we don’t even know the artist) rather than whole albums, and I wonder too if we’re more likely to read individual posts and articles on our devices rather than books. Perhaps we don’t really know who is writing, we just ‘vibe with it’ and that’s that until the next post comes along from someone else entirely. I suppose this has always been pretty normal for poetry too when an established route to discovery is anthologies, journals and magazines etc.
I read this informative, illuminating and damning article yesterday about how no one reads books anymore (of any sort) and so there’s no point writing them. Make of that what you will, but I am choosing to still believe in books even if we as writers have to adjust our expectations. As an aside, I’m very interested in the idea of how all creatives might usefully consider creating an ‘ecology’ of work for themselves; perhaps more specifically still an ‘ecology of writing’. It seems perfectly OK to me that a person might write a book or two through trad publishing, have a newsletter, self publish a niche interest collection, make zines, crowd fund for a quirky project and so on. Personally, I love to spread my creativity through different outlets and avenues and I get a lot of energy from that variety. I don’t consider any of it a side hustle as such, as I consider all of it to be equal and valuable when it comes to the task and joy of self-expression.
But I digress! The point is, I still love books, and more than that I still love getting to know a person through their work. I see the writing I’m drawn to as art not content, and so I value knowing a person’s name, finding a starting point and then exploring their other work. This is I hope the reason why people follow my work and invest in this Substack. You can follow me as I root around in my ecology of work and ideas, just as I like to do with others.
WHICH IS TO SAY, when I published Weathering, I wanted to mark the occasion with a gift for myself. I thought about a piece of jewellery or such, but in the end I decided to buy a stack of poetry books from my wish list. This felt fitting because April is poetry month, and because poetry has a very special and personal place in my heart (it’s where I started out as a writer as an adult). Mostly, I buy books in ones and twos, so the joy of this gift was the sheer volume of the purchase which arrived over two weeks. I purchased 14 books in all, as well as an annual Poetry Foundation subscription. This is what I bought…
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