They Who Take the Word
An altered book by Natalie McGrorty
Poet
No. 1
Autumn, 1972
Natalie writes
"Brown paper package, tied up with string. Further encased in library-made card jacket; grey board with 4 holes punched, one in each corner – seemingly surplus to requirement.
I like the size and proportions of the book, which fits nicely in the hand. The pages are staple-bound. It is a quarterly magazine, with 40 pages. There are 2 inserts, one cream the other red. The red insert reports of ‘A painful announcement…’ The book is in fact a ‘magazine…concerned with poets and their readers.
It is more of a structure for pinning poems to than a critical entity. What is printed in these pages will become a consciousness of life that processes itself with images, rhythms and themes, a kind of collective poet’s consciousness.
‘The poet…sparks his poetry in as many ways as there are lives. There is a world of poets, of listening poets who select…from outside jabber…and writing poets who work their internal reflections, music and ideas and try to set…them down.’
Sifting – poet mesh"
... more about this book on the members' website.
Poet
No. 1
Autumn, 1972
 |
| image copyright Kayleigh Bestwick |
Natalie writes
"Brown paper package, tied up with string. Further encased in library-made card jacket; grey board with 4 holes punched, one in each corner – seemingly surplus to requirement.
I like the size and proportions of the book, which fits nicely in the hand. The pages are staple-bound. It is a quarterly magazine, with 40 pages. There are 2 inserts, one cream the other red. The red insert reports of ‘A painful announcement…’ The book is in fact a ‘magazine…concerned with poets and their readers.
It is more of a structure for pinning poems to than a critical entity. What is printed in these pages will become a consciousness of life that processes itself with images, rhythms and themes, a kind of collective poet’s consciousness.
‘The poet…sparks his poetry in as many ways as there are lives. There is a world of poets, of listening poets who select…from outside jabber…and writing poets who work their internal reflections, music and ideas and try to set…them down.’
Sifting – poet mesh"
... more about this book on the members' website.
You have got to see this!
We have just stumbled across a beautiful blog called Beautiful Places to Read in London
It is a library/book lover's dream. Beautiful images of beautiful places and some dashed fine writing to accompany them. These are people who would totally get The Library of Lost bBooks, read what they have to say about themselves:
 |
| image copyright Beautiful Places to Read in London |
It is a library/book lover's dream. Beautiful images of beautiful places and some dashed fine writing to accompany them. These are people who would totally get The Library of Lost bBooks, read what they have to say about themselves:
"Spiffing locations in our great metropolis to pursue hushful intellectual proclivities. We are but humble students, artists and layabouts. Ideally, these beauteous surroundings should be free, or at least devoid of extravagant financial outlay."
The blog is quite young, just 5 short posts, but if these are anything to go by, this is a blog we should all be giving our support to. More Please!
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| image copyright Beautiful Places to Read in London |
It's Mad March season at The Library of Lost Books
Our £15 Duchamp membership is available for only £10 at the Leeds Artist Book Fair -
AND you will have the chance to win a beautiful, unique, artist's book in our membership giveaway!
Map for Leeds Artists' Book Fair - 8 and 9 March - FREE ENTRY
Lost Libraries
Will
this era be remembered in the future as the time of the lost libraries?
The
death and closure and breaking down, falling-apart and becoming-something-new
of the library, the bookshop, the very book itself, are constituents of our
times. Squatters are running public libraries, people write angry and anguished
letters to the press on the closure of local libraries and the discarding and
pulping of library books. We talk about the death of the book; passion for the
old intimacy of the paper book tempered by pragmatic leanings toward the
convenience of the e-reader.
“Lost
libraries” evokes images of Alexandria
burning, the Nazi confiscations. From the libraries lost from ancient, pillaged
monasteries to our own lost libraries; the forgotten books of our childhood or
the ones given away in later nomadic wanderings between cities and jobs and
broken loves.
Lost
Libraries. The old, hushed, wood panelled space, the dusty, pungent smell of
old paper. The visual and tactile things of the library; tickets and stamps and
plastic covers, bent and peeling. Something of tweed and people wearing
glasses, of rattling trolleys and Dewey’s abstruse ordering.
This
will be gone.
Libraries will embrace change and
the future; the e-book and the computer. And maybe that is right. Maybe that is
imperative to the survival of the library. So in the space of the new,
gleaming, efficient library, with its self-service kiosks and its café and lively
chatter, there is a ghost, many ghosts, the ghosts inside our own heads, those
of us old enough to remember or those who know their history, of the lost
library.
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