Dormant Seed - Chetham's Library, Manchester (31/10-2/11/16)

People read

In a place which time forgot,

Frozen in aspect

Since its inception

In days of old.

Yet Manchester’s legacy

Has not allowed itself

To degrade in that time.

Its beams still ebony dark,

Shelves gated

And alphabetized,

The only atrophy evident

In those neglected tomes.

But as Henry Thoreau once said,

‘Decayed literature makes

The richest of all soils’ –

It only takes one reader

To revive a dormant concept;

Its only takes one seed

To start the growth within.

Times Have Changed - British Museum Reading Room, London (30/10/16)

A world within a world,

Past brushing shoulder with present,

Beneath a powder-blue Pantheon dome.

Wilde lounges tragically against his desk,

Looking more each day

Like the picture he hides.

Orwell and Wells

Discuss the room’s circular aspect,

Akin to an Apocalyptic craft,

While Lenin simply glares and tsks

As I enter without a ticket.

“Times have changed,” he says

Into his copy of War and Peace.

Wilde’s nose falls off.

“You can say that again.”

Dust to Dust - Trinity College Long Room, Dublin (29-30/10/16)

What is this quintessence of dust

Reiterated from shelf to shelf

Down an interminable hallway

Of darkened wood?

As they render, they float,

Hanging motes in the sunlight,

Disappearing into obscurity

And the penumbra

Of the embowed heights.

It is there he will be waiting,

A clotted shadow,

Until the light has faded

For fear of adding himself

To the floating film of the air.

He has only the name

The illustrious student gave;

Enough to warn off late night studies

Lest they become his midnight snack,

For the name upon their lips

Is that of Dracula.

Shakespeare on the Moon - Birmingham Central Library (28/10/16)

Willie Shakespeare stepped out of his room

And froze in a perplexed breed of fear.

“Where in the name of the Lord

Have they taken me now?”

He was quite used to the library

Having the occasional facelift,

Being packed and unpacked,

Relocated and recreated,

But this was another thing entirely.

Gone were the uniform free-standing shelves,

Replaced with sleek lighted casing

Pressed into circular walls.

No more were the strict heavy steps,

Now neon conveyors carried patrons

From floor to curvaceous floor.

Goodbye to the standard stone façade,

Hello to filigree, glass, and gold

Like a draping of ornate chainmail.

Willie Shakespeare stepped back in

And sighed theatrically.

“Maybe next time,

They will have taken me to the Moon.”

A Virgin Birth - Bodleian Libraries, Oxford (27/10/16)

Above a church in Oxford,

You can still hear history whisper

Of the fifteenth-century night

When an academic empire was born.

Invisible Congregation - Signet Library, Edinburgh (26-27/10/16)

If I should say ‘I do’

It will be among friends,

Those who have changed my life,

Whom I think of every day.

They will need no invite

But play host instead,

Welcoming my guests

With tacit grandeur.

I will see them as I walk

Down the aisle

And remember the adventures

We had at the turn of a page.

Imagine them shed a silent tear

Like my mother would,

To see me dressed in white.

To Feed a Poet - Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh (25/10/16)

Poetry exists on every level:

The thought, the written,

The spoken, the heard.

It must persist in every form,

At any time,

Simultaneously.

As the mind hates a vacuum,

It was a chance for Scotland

To insist

That such a place must be,

For the word to live both on

And off the page;

To coexist within the confines

Of the provided space.

A performance poet’s paradise,

The bread and butter

On which they subsist.