Naturally my house is made of books. Made of piles and shelves and bookcases. There are bricks and things too, but mainly books.
This is part of my study wall. (I put up these shelves. They’re made of beech.) I keep the poetry in here (other stuff sneaks in, but is mostly piled on my desk, or resting horizontally among the shelves until it finds its proper place). And it’s mostly alphabetical in here. Here, I try. The rest of the house is less ordered.
Because I write books and books have people in, it happens that sometimes that I’m called upon to give these people names. Sometimes it’s hard thinking of names, so I turn around in my chair and look at the books behind me.
Directly behind my desk are the shelves on the left in this picture. They run from A to H. At the very top is a long row of Auden, which is why the Bearded Boy in Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy was called Wystan.
While I was writing The Imaginary, I found I needed a name for my villain. I turned around again and this time found myself face to face with Basil Bunting’s surprisingly slim Collected Poems. And so Mr Bunting was named.
(Later on Emily Gravett drew him (see picture below), and later on still someone in the design department at my Italian publisher redid the writing.)
I just shared the photo of my shelves with fellow Burning Eye Books poet Megan Beech, whose great collection When I Grow Up I Want To Be Mary Beard sits on my shelf in between books by Francesca Beard and Jo Bell (actually, fellow Two Rivers Press poet Kate Behrens is hiding between Beech and Bell, but she’s slid back, mostly out of sight, in this picture).
The photo of my shelves inspired Megan to quote Virginia Woolf on Twitter: ‘Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather[...]’ (Plenty of the books on those shelves are second hand; but plenty are new too.)
The reason I started writing this post is because Megan reminded me of my very favourite Winston Churchill quote, which was too long to send her in a tweet. Hence I had to write this thing instead.
In his 1932 book/essay Painting As A Pastime Churchill says (there are two paragraphs I love, and the second is the really relevant one):
The most common form of diversion is reading. In that vast varied form millions find their mental comfort. Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library. ‘A few books,’ which was Lord Morley’s definition of anything under five thousand, may give a sense of comfort and even of complacency. But a day in a library, even of modest dimensions, quickly dispels these illusory sensations. As you browse about, taking down book after book from the shelves and contemplating the vast, infinitely varied store of knowledge and wisdom which the human race has accumulated and preserved, pride, even in its most innocent forms, is chased from the heart by feelings of awe not untinged with sadness. As one surveys the mighty array of sages, saints, historians, scientists, poets, and philosophers whose treasures one will never be able to admire – still less enjoy – the brief tenure of our existence here dominates mind and spirit.
‘What shall I do with all my books?’ was the question; and the answer, ‘Read them,’ sobered the questioner. But if you cannot read them, at any rate handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open where they will. Read on from the first sentence that arrests the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. Set them back on their shelves with your own hands. Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.
I have a few acquaintances, possibly more. And some friends. Yes, friends.
