How Many Librarians Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

SPL tipsheets INSPIRING LIBRARIANS

How many librarians does it take to change a lightbulb? None! Librarians ARE lightbulbs, providing illumination that is also enlightenment.

OK, that was a bit sooky. But it’s true. Few professionals have had to cope with more change, unsettling change, than librarians. Quiet places to read, refer to and borrow books, have become noisy places to use computers and browse DVDs, customers have replaced readers and libraries are now learning centres, ‘tasked with’ being most things to most users. Many librarians feel beleaguered by budget cuts and, in every sense, undervalued. For a few, understandably, cynicism sings its siren song. And yet librarians continue to light up lives…

Remember this Every time we lend a book we freely give away the delight and insight it contains. Each book we borrow we get to keep, even after we have returned it, because the wonderful words remain. If librarians lend literature, they also lend new leases of life. And the books that challenge and change us most, contain poetry. Anyone can enjoy poetry and everyone should. There is a right poem for every reader and every situation, many right poems. Getting access to poets and poems has never been easier. Plenty of excellent writers are available to perform their poetry and perform it well. Poetry groups and classes are thriving. Whether for self expression to meet therapeutic needs, ambition to be published, just for fun, or some or all of the above, more people than ever are writing poetry. This expansion of interest is also reflected in the media’s engagement with and support for poetry of all kinds and at all levels. Key cultural institutions present, promote, protect and project poetry. Libraries, whether specialist, academic or local play a major part in furthering poetry’s cause. Considered as infrastructure, this coming together provides many linked opportunities for those wishing to get more out of poetry. And that would be all of us! Hugh MacDiarmid was a poet who helped shape modern Scotland. He claimed to have read every volume in Langholm Library and even to have been locked in over night like a wee boy in a sweetie shop. Not all change brought about by poetry is as dramatic. Poems are transformative and indeed transcendent. And libraries are great places to get hold of them even during normal working hours! Poets live by language; and language lives by them. Poetry is the most special thing in the world and yet it is as basic as the bread we eat or the breath we draw. It should be precious in only one sense of that word. In libraries, poetry is accessible, applicable and available. It should also be unavoidable. So…

Now consider this Poems on the door to and walls of every library. A Christmas tree dressed with poems? A Saint Andrew’s Day saltire made of poems? Fridge magnet style word tiles should be attractively on hand for the making of poems by old and young alike. Poetry going out into ‘the community’. Activities planned with partner institutions, present beyond the building, synergy and symbiosis. Poetry needs to get out more.

Scottish Poetry Library download your free copy from www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk SPL tipsheets An occasional poetry alarm, followed by a live reading or recording of a poem – perhaps the poem of the week, or a work by the poet of the month. A library poem of the week, as well as a poet of the month. Combine the lauded living – it’s ok to pin up a single display copy of a poem in copyright, as long as you’re not selling or giving away other copies – and the dangerously dead. Email an out-of-copyright poem to colleagues once a month. Always gets a good response: everyone loves a change from the usual work emails. Properly promoted and supported poetry reading groups in every library. Complement the reading group by setting up a poetry writing group, overlap between the groups encouraged. Special groups for younger readers and writers should also be encouraged. The all too familiar attitude of I love books but I just don’t GET poetry should be politely, tactfully, appropriately, good naturedly and persistently challenged at every turn (even with colleagues), because poetry certainly ‘gets’ them and has done for millenia! Mr A. Verse may not understand Edwin Morgan, but Eddie’s poems understand him… Organise visits by good poets of some standing, at least four times a year, the reading to be followed by a well prepared, competently-chaired discussion with the guest reader. Think how best you could link the readings with poem of the week, reading and writing groups, community visits.. Treat yourself to some professional inspiration, online, in the media, or a film at the end of the day. The innovative projects of the Scottish Poetry Library, the BBC’s poetry programming on radio, television and i-Player, the Poetry Archive website and recordings, the British Museum’s archive of poetry recordings. Il Postino (Neruda), Night Mail (Auden), movies by Pasolini, Prevert, Tony Harrison, Simon Armitage, Douglas Dunn, Hamish Henderson; the libraries of the BBC and Channel 4 are treasure troves in this regard. Libraries are ‘locals’ too, just as pubs are. Be vocal about the local! Have a readers’ day featuring local writers, living and dead, of course, involving children, with poetry included everywhere. And don’t be above tying in poetry with seasonal and festive opportunities throughout the library. Halloween. Christmas. Valentine’s Day. Saint Andrew’s Day… But how about some spring poems for Saint Brigid’s Day (February the first), or in commemoration of Columba, Ninian or another locally significant figure? All the cultures, creeds and ethnicities of contemporary Scotland can be celebrated through poetry. Use every medium to have fulfilling fun with poetry. Get library users making sound and DVD recordings of poems being recited, their own, or by others. Run a ‘REMEMBER POETRY’ event in which library users are enjoined to commit a favourite poem to memory. As a librarian, learn a few poems off by heart yourself! Become your own anthology…A human jukebox of verse…There are so many good anthologies, old and new, on every subject and with every kind of poem. Always be able, personally, to recommend a good one. What are your ten ways to facilitate the production, preservation, presentation, prioritisation and promotion of poetry? ______Poetry doesn’t die, it finds new places to live. Long may it live in libraries… and librarians ______

Libraries offer solace and sanctuary. When I was eight, my life was changed for ever the foggy November evening I first went with my mother to our local library. She’d fill a bulging shopping

Scottish Poetry Library download your free copy from www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk SPL tipsheets trolley with books I’d help her choose, pack and trundle; books I’d read and learn from. Ours was a working class household in which books as possessions did not prominently feature. But books for what was in them? That was a different matter. Every Tuesday night a new bag full. And in some of those books was poetry… I’ve been a borrower and a lender ever since. Poetry is the ultimate transferable skill. Poetry was said to be the new Rock and Roll. It wasn’t. It’s the same old same old, wonderfully so, familiar, time-honoured and beautiful as a sunset at sea. It rippled through the lyres of Thracian elegists, rang out in the chants of Celtic bards, informs every note and syllable of every Leonard Cohen song, pounds and pulses with the rhyme and rhythm of rap. It won’t be going away any time soon. Poetry doesn’t die, it just finds new places to live. Long may it live in libraries… and librarians.

Donny O’Rourke

Donny O’Rourke is a poet, songwriter, translator, journalist, teacher, editor (of Dream State: the New Scot- tish Poets) and broadcaster. His most recent collections are One Light Burning, The Cleft in My Heart and Blame Yesterday. He spent six months in Bern on the Scotland-Switzerland Exchange Fellowship in 2008. Cafe Europa, a CD featuring his lyrics and the music of Swiss group Morgain, was launched in Bern in Janu- ary 2010. He is an Honorary Fellow of Glasgow University where he teaches Film and Creative Writing.

Out of copyright poems Try Project Gutenberg for full texts of out-of-copyright poems, www.gutenberg.com Check if poets are in copyright on the WATCH database (Writers, Artists and Their Copyright Holders), http://tyler.hrc.utexas.edu Use ‘Classic Poems’ selected for the Reading Room

Poetry Recordings A brilliant big database of recordings by major poets, CDs available for purchase, www.poetryarchive.org Poetry Jukebox on www.57productions.com Publishers and poets are waking up to the potential of sound and video online: check YouTube and other sites for short online recordings of poets reading their own work

Poets visiting your library Scottish Book Trust run the Live Literature Scotland scheme, which helps you pay Scottish-based writers’ fee and travel expenses. Search the LLS database to check which poets are registered to take part, and find details of how to apply at www.scottishbooktrust.com

Scottish Poetry Library Tipsheets and ideas for working with poetry at www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk

Training for librarians Contact Lilias Fraser, [email protected], at the Scottish Poetry Library about organising a training session for library colleagues who want to feel more confident using poetry in their work.

Famous poet librarians Sir Walter Scott, Jorge Luis Borges, Philip Larkin, Douglas Dunn... and you?

Scottish Poetry Library download your free copy from www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk