Shelf Life

A Sunday essay about books, and moving things on, and a big vote of thanks to my parents.

The first of two new bookcases arrived this weekend, with hope to house some of the piles that currently fill the hallway. I’ve written before about books-as-identity; they continue to arrive — new, advance copies to review, old favourites that somehow follow me home from the second hand stores.

Last week I donated a bunch to a store. And traded a few others in for credit, in a win/win that will allow me to ‘buy’ a book or three on a whim, and will give that store some decent extra stock to flog.

People always say that they could not part with books. They are people that maybe own hundreds, never thousands.

There is, as The Mutton Birds mournfully sang, a limit.

Late last week I gave a reading and author-talk as part of a panel of writers in the Havelock North Public Library. This was my first library. I was there at four and five and six years old. We took school trips down there to fill our book-bags, because the library at school was just the size of a classroom, this felt like a town map coloured in with books. And, look, one time I was thrown out of that library for audibly swearing. Thirty years on I’m reading poems with both ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt’ in the lines and people are clapping at the end. Maybe out of politeness. But hey, every seat was filled.

During that talk I was asked about my connection to Hawke’s Bay in terms of writing, and I said that I was first introduced to poetry there. My folks weren’t exactly fans of poetry, but they encouraged it in me. They bought books, and took me to see Sam Hunt and Gary McCormack. They listened to my typewriter dreams, and let me pin song lyrics all over the walls, and later my own attempts to write words for tunes, or just words that I thought deserved to be heard; deserved to be seen — and therefore proudly displayed.

All books contain poetry, I said from the stage. Even the books that aren’t about or specifically written in verse. There’s poetry in the written word. And my parents engaged with me by enabling all of that; they really filled the house with books, and it has spilled over to my house now. And like a garden that only grows when the weeds aren’t choking it — that lives and shines because of a prune, I’m now tasked with making some hard cuts.

Which is also what you do with poems.