Missing my library visits

As I write this, it's National Poetry Day (1 October) so I think I'll share with you my poem about libraries that was aired on BBC Coventry and Warwickshire Radio last night as part of the National Poetry Day celebrations. The poem is called 'Towards the Exit'. 

Here's the show itself - it's called Coventry Creates and it's hosted each week by presenter Rachel New. I'm on at approximately 13 minutes, and listen to the whole show if you haven't celebrated National Poetry Day yet. 

Coventry Creates show

And here's the poem for you to read. I wrote it a while ago, pre-Covid, and it sounds like a picture of a bygone world. Let's hope and pray that soon we can go back to our libraries without all the restrictions and impositions that make it a very different experience. 

Towards the exit

 

I find a book on Shakespeare’s life, misplaced

in the Cookery section.  No worries.

Here’s a blue corner chair, a vase

of optimistic daffodils on a windowsill,

and an hour to laze through glossed pages.

 

A woman with a stick and a wheeze tugs

herself up the ramp to Fiction.  She smiles

to find new romance in ‘Recently Returned’

and leans against a pillar for the first pages

in which Marion flies to Morocco with a sad heart.

 

A young man, tall, unshaven, taps

his dreams into an online form. He bends

towards the screen as if in prayer

to a fickle deity, scrolling up and

down for errors, for slips, for what’s missing.

 

A child in denim dungarees, perches

on the chair opposite me.  The mother

browses the shelves while his fat fingers

trace a dragon’s tail across the page

and he points out green and blue to us all.

 

Two men, both in sturdy boots, shed

mud in ‘Crime’ while swapping views on

Rankin -

 

- The library will close in five minutes -

 

Clutching Shakespeare and Marion

in Morocco and dreams and dragons

and a Rebus mystery (and a leaflet on cuts

from a table near the door)

we all sigh towards the exit.

 

And here I am, reading in a library. You can tell it's me because of those lovely long slim legs. 

                                  

Fran Hill is a writer, blogger and English tutor living in Warwickshire. She lies about her legs often. 

Her latest book is 'Miss, What Does Incomprehensible Mean?' - a funny but poignant teacher-memoir about a typical year in her schoolteaching career. It's published by SPCK Publishing. You can find out more about Fran and her work on her website by going to her website here