The Modern - Sir Duncan Rice Library, Aberdeen (24/10/16)

There’s something strange

About a building

That can disappear in plain sight,

On a bright cloudy day

It is nothing more

Than a trick of the light.

For those who penetrate

The illusion,

Another lies within;

What once resembled

An ice cube

Is melting beneath the skin.

Within the shifting layers,

The humble book

Appears,

Its form unlike

Its holdings

Unchanged for all these years.

Open Up - Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (23/10/16)

This library is a zoo,

Its shelving is the cages,

And all one needs

To set them free

Is open up the pages.

This library is a hospital,

Its patients sit in rows,

Their symptoms hidden,

All bedridden

Until the doctor shows.

This library is a library

Of science and of more,

So if you may

Be in Bath one day,

Then open up their door.

Ode to the Librarian (22/10/16)

You make order out of chaos

So unassumingly

And live in a place

That I’d much rather be,

As keeper of the ledger

Of the cathedral of the mind,

Guiding the lost

To the books they cannot find,

Or prescribing a dose

Of something new to read

As the literary nurse

That every town needs.

Is This Hogwarts? - John Rylands Library, Manchester (21-22/10/16)

‘Don’t be fooled’ I tell myself,

‘This is no fantasy’

As I gaze up at a Neo-Gothic façade

Of blood red stone,

Lavish with black lace tracery,

Parapets and gargoyles.

The roar of city life falls away beyond the door,

To a cloister-like quietude I fear to break

By ascending the labyrinthine stair,

Yet each step I take is slow out of wonder

For the nature of what surrounds me:

So organic, skeletal, intricate, and fictional,

It forces me to the edge of disbelief.

I ascend faster in fear that it should move.

There is the briefest second

When I brush reality

As the ecclesiastical echo of the reading room

Is soft with the hum of book-lined alcoves,

Of the warm lights sprouting from every wall,

But beneath the cavernous rib-vaulted ceiling

I am insignificant, I am transported.

I stare hard into marble faces

Daring them to blink,

Unable to conceive of another explanation

For this hollow enchanted place.

‘Don’t be fooled’ I tell myself,

‘This is no fantasy.’

City Escape - Maughan Library, King's College, London (20/10/16)

It feels like the walls are rotating,

Like you’re falling down

The rabbit hole,

Like the Martians are hovering

To take you away.

When you’re surrounded by shelves

On every side

Is the door your escape

Or the book?

Apple Pips - Mobile Library (19/10/16)

The child needed a saviour.

In so remote a dwelling

A hamlet library had no place;

The mother had no time or money

To vaccinate against indolence.

The child was a dormant seed.

A van selling ice cream

Tinkled down the lane

But stopped for no one.

The child looked up from her apple,

To watch it with hungry eyes.

Another van did stop.

The child dropped her apple

As she covered her ears.

There was a commotion

And a man in a bed,

Before it wailed away again.

The third van was silent.

The child wondered at it,

The apple forgotten.

Its doors opened on greater things

Than frozen dairy and pain.

Things that could water the seed inside,

Things to answer the child’s questions.

The child was given a book.

She saw the ambulance again

And waved to the man on the bed.

The ice cream man saw her today

As she read on the garden wall.

Her mother smiled

As she watered her apple tree.

The child had found her saviour.

Mackintosh in Ashes - Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow (18-19/10/16)

Smouldering in sunlight

Streaming through heat-shattered panes,

Mackintosh lies burning,

Wrought-iron roses withered

Upon the sill in mourning.

Hellfire reduced his work

To charcoal and clinker,

Iconic lights dripped from the ceiling,

Furniture fuelled the flames

Of a geometric bonfire.

The reality of the loss as one sifts

Through blackened timbers and trusses

Searching for survivors,

Is stark, painful, pathetic,

And phenomenal.

They cry for not a volume,

not a page, not a line remains

Of the tenants of tulipwood shelves,

Their souls scorched, their binding burnt,

Incinerated by an Art Nouveau Apocalypse.