Last night I was listening to Radio 4's Front Row after delivering a book to some dear friends and was blown away by Poet Phoebe Stuckes. Since opening my bookshop in late June I have been building our stock to not only reflect the books that I believe deserve a place on our shelves but to reflect our demographic and the world around us today.
Whilst we all need to get lost in the wonder of fiction and fill our heads with the knowledge of experts and be challenged from the non-fiction bookcase I feel I must now turn my attention to our Poetry offering. Not only does poetry shine a sideways light on our world and open doors and invite us into rooms we never might have entered without that invitation it also polishes a window between communities allowing us to see each other in new ways and to connect.
Over the next few weeks I will be stuffing our shelves, not only with Auden and Armitage, Keats and Wordsworth but the poets of today such as the talented Phoebe Stuckes so watch this space, the poets are no longer whispering in a darkened room with a glass of ginger wine, they are standing on the roof tops with a cigarette in one hand and a can of beer in the other declaring that poetry is for everybody......bravo I say, bring it on.