FAQs ... aka ‘what are you trying to do?’ Well, we’re here to ...
- Remind people of the importance of free public libraries
- Subvert mainstream channels of distribution
- Remind people that access to knowledge should be free and not dependent upon economic wealth hierarchies
- Show people that poetry/art can provide answers to questions we ask of life
- Experiment in existing outside of 'the market' – thereby, instead, investing in social capital, social innovation and community.
Incidental FAQs- Yes we carry our entire life and the library with us as we go
- Yes, it is quite heavy
- No, we're not mad. As the former US Poet Laureate, Charles Simic, once said, 'But what if poets are not crazy?' That's the spirit boyo!
- In the US we operated our entire life and library on a budget of 4 US dollars per day
- In East Germany in 2009 we achieved our personal budgetary best record: operating life & library on a budget of one euro per day
- We operate under official regulations, guidance policies and with core purposes, designated as the movement LIBRARYISM, and also known within peripheral circles as The Zen of the Library.
- Our Library ByeByeLaws are based on Norfolk County Council's Public Libraries ByeLaws, in turn regulated under the original UK 1964 Libraries & Museums Act. Have we adapted them for our own purposes? Yes we have. Do we mean funny business? Yes we do.
- Click here for ByeByeLaws in full.
Our HistoryThe Library & The Itinerant Poetry Librarian technically form part of our operating ‘mother unit’ –
The Poetry Cubicle, an interactive experimental arts space. We’ve just gone a bit AWOL since 2006 that’s all. The Library was established at exactly the same time as The Poetry Cubicle itself, i.e. founded in Norwich (UK) in 2002. It originally consisted of a small collection of poetry items, including books, pamphlets, magazines, and other poetry objects specially created for The Poetry Cubicle by a number of local artists. We also had a poem rack in situ, which featured a series of selected poems by poets from both in and out of East Anglia (East of England: Norfolk & Norwich in particular). Poems were searchable and catalogued via a series of records stored on handwritten index cards.
From 2002 onwards we continued to maintain and curate our Library collection, so that we find it now encompasses several thousand items spanning digital, vinyl, paper, book, pamphlet, magazine, 100% cotton and other media. Woops. Most of it is currently stored in our mother's attic. Phew.
Between 2002 - 2005 the Library operated primarily in situ, that is, in a fixed location, now and again wandering with a mobile unit (a discarded BBC wooden unit complete with 2 BBC 'learn mandarin' leaflets pinned to the green-felt backing interior) to operate in tandem with live Poetry Cubicle events at such places as Norwich Arts Centre and Glastonbury Festival.
In May 2006 we began to orbit.
"Freedom from even a semi-permanent location with other materials
promotes greater flexibility to meet the constantly changing variety of reader demands."