To celebrate publication of Days Like These, I’ll be reading some poems* in a live virtual event with @bookshop_org_uk – in support of UK independent bookshops – this evening at 7pm UK time.
More info on tickets and books can be found here:
https://bit.ly/brian_bilston_event
*approx. 21
I’d buy everything from a bookshop if I could.
All my food would come from there.
Atwooden tables I would sit, eating Dahl,
Kipling Tartts or chocolate Baudelaires.
There’d be flat tortillas, focaccia and the rye:
it would be a literary-luncheoned life of pie,
all washed down with a glass of Carver
or a Swift half, if I’d rather.
I would make myself an Eco-friendly home:
go Greene and buy recycled tomes.
It Wodehouse a Self-portrait in the attic,
where no-one else could look at it,
and a looking-glass, of course, for the hall,
(amazing how I’ve not changed at all).
My house would Spark delighted looks;
I’d build a coffee table out of coffee table books.
I would also buy my clothes from there:
ragged trousers, experimental novel underwear,
dust jackets and striped pyjamas.
Boyd by the comments that I would Garner,
my days would pass quite Harper Lee,
this bookshop life, these books and me.
I would get everything
from a bookshop if I were able.
The food on my table
would come from there.
I would dine on tartts and flanns,
chocolate baudelaires,
lead a life of pi and dahl,
rice and flat tortillas,
accompanied by greenes.
They would all arrive
upon the scene
on gleaming sylvia platters.
The environment matters
so I would buy products
to suit eco-friendly homes,
like organic biographies,
and recycled tomes
with which to paper walls.
Wildely, I’d buy a painting
to hang in the attic or hall,
next to a looking-glass
(to admire my unchanging looks).
I’d build a coffee table
out of coffee table books.
I would buy my clothes there.
Dust jackets, ragged trousers,
experimental novel underwear.
But no, instead it’s the bore
of the supermarket, the mall,
the soulless online store
that try to take me in my prime
and leave me searching
for lost time.
But they can shelve
their plans for me.
I shall ignore all their displays.
I am piling up
these reference books
to make a bookshop barricade.
Brian Bilston's Poetry Laboetry 