On the need for a poetry bookshop

Every Saturday afternoon from the early 1960s onwards, the diminutive, genial [Bernard] Stone would dispense free glasses of wine to a boozy, bohemian crowd. This included not only Horowitz, but also Alan Brownjohn, Christopher Logue, Lawrence Durrell, Alan Sillitoe and Sir John Waller, the last invariably squiring a tough-looking, semi-literate, gay pick-up whom he would introduce as "a wonderful new poet". Another colourful regular at these Saturday afternoon parties was the hellraising, drug-addicted novelist, Alexander Trocchi.

Stone went on to create Cafe Books, which specialised in pamphlets by young poets such as Roger McGough and Brian Patten. The Turret Bookshop also provided the base for both Turret Books and the Steam Press, which was run in partnership with Stone's friend, the cartoonist Ralph Steadman, whose illustrations adorned two of Stone's children's books. Under the Steam Press and Turret Books imprints, a range of publications by the likes of Alan Brownjohn and Ted Hughes were released in limited editions.

Obituary of Bernard Stone in the Guardian

As the 1980s moved into the 1990s, Camden became a magnet for the world's teenagers and Compendium underwent a facelift. Mike [Hart] formalised its literary scene by initiating regular readings in the bookshop, something of an innovation at the time. Visiting Americans, from old beat heroes like Lawrence Ferlinghetti to new literary lions like Walter Mosley, read there; so too did the London writers Iain Sinclair, Martin Millar and Derek Raymond.

Obituary of Mike Hart in the Guardian

And I’d love to see a modern version of the late Bernard Stone’s Turret Bookshop, a poetry bookshop that ran from the 50s to the 70s in London. But that is a job for someone else. And what a great use of Arts Council funding that would be.

Ross Bradshaw in Staple

After writing the above coda to an article about bookselling in Staple (where, by the way, I under-represented the longevity of Bernard Stone’s Turret Bookshop) several people mentioned the absence of a dedicated poetry bookshop in London.

The Turret will never be built again, the rise of the internet cut away Compendium’s base of imported books but their absence – together with the much missed Poetry Society’s book room – has meant there is no dedicated place selling poetry over the counter in Britain, by which I mean London, the only place a poetry bookshop would be economic.

Not long after these specialist outlets ran out of steam or moved on, the main chain in the UK, Waterstones, took a much harder approach to what they stocked and what they returned. Now, in many major towns and cities, the only poetry books actually on sale are the popular anthologies, books by long dead poets and books by a handful of popular writers. It is near impossible to browse through the next level of poets beyond Cope, Duffy, Heaney… and to find who is on the up, who’s new. All poetry publishers have been affected by this. Of the major bookshops perhaps only Foyles has a good poetry section and one where a book sold to the shop remains sold.

The most significant outlets are Festivals, Ledbury, Stanza, Aldeburgh; the regular rounds of readings; the Poetry Book Society. None of these allow an easy way in to the casual buyer, the person who wants a present, the school librarian that wants to build up a section from books they have touched or seen. There is nowhere for the newly interested to browse, nowhere for the obscure to nestle next to the popular, nowhere that brings the wide range of magazines together (for sale), nowhere to provide the most natural background to launches and readings where one book leads to another, nowhere that displays a range of critical work next to material in translation, next to poetry cards, next to Candlestick’s poetry pamphlets, next to old and important anthologies, next to CDs of poetry being read, next to limited editions while behind the counter there is someone who knows what the customer is talking about. Digital has its limitations (though any poetry bookshop could also sell on line).

I emphasise for sale, as the Poetry Library and the Scottish Poetry Library does this for researchers and browsers, but poetry needs to sell. And by sale I mean over the counter to the passing stranger – not by subscription. The PBS does, but has a naturally limited constituency and the Scottish Poetry Library does, better, but with only a limited range of books.

The Arts Council provides funding for authors, for residencies, for training courses, for Festivals, for publishers, for Inpress to distribute publishers, for the Poetry Library, but not a bookshop…

Why not?

Where poetry is an inclusive art, by Andy Croft

I have recently returned from Paris, where I took part in the long-running International Poetry Biennale in Val-de-Marne - the only department in the Paris region still governed by the Communist Pat.
The presiding genius of the festival, which aims to democratise the writing and reading of poetry, is the poet Francis Combes. He's been responsible for putting poems on the Paris Metro and runs the radical publishing house De Temps Des Cerises.
Along with myself, this year's poets included Valerio Magrelli and Maria Grazia Calandrone from Italy, Florence Pazzottu and Gerard Mordillat from France and Greece's Yourgos Markopoulos, Dino Siotis and Thanasis Triaridis. These poets try to address the crisis in contemporary Europe with a passionate eloquence, biter wisdom and scathing irony.
How depressing then, to arrive back in Britain just in time for the announcement of this year's TS Eliot Prize shortlist. It's the usual carve-up between a small group of publishers - Picador (3), Faber (2), Jonathan Cape (2), Carcanet (2) and Seren (1). And its the usual dull Poetry Book Society (PBS) narrative of "major names" and "newcomers", alongside bookie's favourites, outsiders and dark-horses.
The fact that there are some excellent writers on this year's list - Deryn Rees-Jones, Simon Armitage and Kathleen Jamie - cannot disguise the intellectual narrowness of the whole enterprise.
Two of this year's judges are previous winners of the prize, five of the short-listed authors have been short-listed before and four have judged the prize in previous years. Six titles were chosen by the judges, the other four were PBS quarterly choices, themselves selected by the authors of previous PBS choices.
It's a ludicrous and unpleasant racket. But at least there is no public money involved any more. Having lost its Arts Council support, the PBS is now sponsored by an international investment firm. Appropriate perhaps for a literary prize named after TS Eliot, a banker, anti-semite, admirer of Mussolini, believer in the divine right of kings and opponent of the 1944 Education Act. The winner will be announced in January. I can't wait.

This article first appeared in the Morning Star. Andy Croft's latest book for Five Leaves is the novel-in-verse 1948.

Snakes and ladders at the Arts Council

Five Leaves currently receives a modest sum from the Arts Council's Grants for the Arts Scheme and is not in the big league of those fighting over the reduced spoils available through the national portfolio scheme whose winners and losers have just been announced. Comments on them in a minute but at all times remember that the sums available are reduced entirely because the Government prefers to stuff money into the orifices of greedy bankers and tax avoiders. That's our colours nailed to the mast then. So, good news for our friends at Peepal Tree (the main publishers of Caribbean work), the distributor Inpress, the short story specialist Comma, Writing East Midlands and Writing on the Wall book festival in Liverpool. We are pleased that Liverpool Arabic Festival is in there, which group has been very supportive of our two Arabic projects with Peter Mortimer. There's quite a bit of new money going into children's literature, which seems to have been overlooked by the commentators, with a major uplift for Seven Stories and others but little surprise attached to Nick Hornby's Ministry of Stories getting support. I'm not the only one shocked, however, to see Faber supported to the tune of £40k a year, not least as they are so mean in charging high reprint fees to small presses wishing to publish their poems in anthologies. Couldn't they, y'know, put on another performance of Cats or something?

But what of the losers? Our regional manager from the Arts Council said in his circular that it would not be right to list those whose applications failed. Perhaps he has not come across that internet thingy yet as the list takes about three seconds to find on a google search and it was on twitter and the BBC website this morning. I wonder whether the need to apply for a minimum of £50k per annum saw off some of the small publishers that applied which might have been able to put in strong applications for half that, but friends at Flambard and Arc lost out. There does seem to be some confused thinking as the Poetry Translation Centre did well, and the British Centre for Literary Translation yet Arc is a major publisher of poetry in translation as is Anvil who were not thrown overboard but will be on half-rations, and the fiction in translation specialist Arcadia did not do well either. Poetry actually did badly - Enitharmon lost out as did the Poetry Trust and above all, the Poetry Book Society. Like many small indies we have issues with PBS related to the lead time for submissions making it hard for people our size to get our collections selected. But there is no doubt that PBS shifts poetry books, in quantity, and the reduction in poetry being stocked by bookshops made its existence all the more important. It seems strange to strangle the PBS but to continue to fund, say, Poetry London, or Survivors' Poetry and to add Poet in the City. No wonder Carol Ann Duffy is spitting nails. The poetry and short story publisher Salt was also unsuccessful, but those of us of a long memory wonder whether their earlier statement about it being a bad thing to be dependent on ACE funding worked against them, as could their recent article in Poetry Review revealing a massive slump in sales. I was also sorry to see the Windows Project in Liverpool lose out as they have done some excellent work. Losing all the funding for the Writing in Prison Network will hit hard as well given how much work they have done to address literacy in prisons. Maybe - and I did not see their bid - that was their problem. Good work but not necessarily "good art"?

It does look as if those who actually publish work did not do well (never mind the huge loss to sales represented by the PBS losing out). Save for Peepal Tree a first look through the scores on the doors indicates around standstill for Bloodaxe and Carcanet, with Tindall Street choosing to move in due course from Arts Council funding (the official report looks as if they are chopped at year three but chose to end their funding then themselves). Yet the Arvon Foundation, which provides residential courses to aspiring writers, has had a major uplift. Arvon runs great courses in great venues with great tutors but with the book trade in freefall and little money here going to publishers who is going to publish all the newbies? Faber?

What of the agencies? New Writing North (whose work I respect) has had a large increase, Writers' Centre in Norwich (whose work I don't know) a whopping increase and Writing West Midlands added to the portfolio with a very large budget. I hope they all spend it wisely.