Whisper of the Heart

At University, when I’d finally handed in my coursework at the end of a semester, I'd get the same feeling of freedom and release as having an unexpected day off school. I’d go straight to the basement of the University Library - not to the upper levels where most of the Literature books were - but to the low-lit basement, with its car-boot assortment of books. I would take whatever I wanted from the shelves: Egyptian Cryptography, Child Psychology, table-sized atlases - anything that I knew nothing about and felt excited by got tilted off the shelves and stacked in my arms. After following reading lists for months, and being so focused on a text or question that it felt microscopic, it was like entering a clearing - to be able to read anything at all, after such a long period of dieting and abstinence.

In 2012, I organised a large Poetry Festival for the Olympic celebrations,  called Poetry Parnassus. Reading, sourcing translations and researching thousands of living poets, rappers and spoken word artists had been my life for over a year. After the festival was finished, I moved to Norwich. I had no internet, no 3G, no wifi, no TV -  just a small built-in library overlooking a magnolia tree. I spent the summer evenings sitting in that library on my great-grandmother's chair, at my grandmother's writing desk and did nothing but delight in returning to and being able to read dead poets again. These poets became my new life: Anna Świrszczyńska,  Marina Tsvetaeva, Rolf Jacobsen, Czesław Miłosz, Anna Akhmatova, Wisława Szymborska, Zbigniew Herbert, Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak, Vasko Popa...

 I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure."  
                                                                                    Virginia Woolf

Libraries make me feel at home everywhere, and constantly make me happy. Amongst London’s expense and hyperbole, it feels like entering a temple, to wander in, and sit in any of these spaces - peaceful, safe places for families, the homeless, students, teenagers, readers and writers - where nothing has to be bought or paid for.  One of my favourite poems, Suntan - by British poet and Librarian, Lorraine Mariner got me one of my first jobs, working with libraries for The Reading Agency, a favourite film of mine (about reading) is Studio Ghibli's: Whisper of the Heart (Mimi wo Sumaseba); and one of life’s delights, is ordering book takeaway from librarians and waiting for the text to come in that it's arrived, or have one of your favourite writer's handwritten journals, letters, or diaries brought to your table.
 
I am dyslexic and struggled with essay writing when I was studying,  especially in exams. I have the reading comprehension of an 8 year-old and am not able to see basic mistakes I make, so have to re-read through things many, many times. Whilst I was doing my undergratuate degree, I got support from a writer as part of the Royal Literary Fund's, Fellowship scheme. This same writer was a lecturer, and told me they’d had to change the system once I’d graduated: I'd managed to shape my path through the system enough that I had all coursework and no exams for my degree, and had (accidentally) done more Creative Writing modules than any student in the history of the University of East Anglia.
 
After I left University, I developed a similar reading process in public libraries - a kind of scavengers’ banquet: whatever books are left on the table or desk I choose to sit at, are my reading material for the afternoon, or morning. It is a good way to get out of fixed reading habits. I can’t help wondering about who has chosen and left each selection - what they are like, where they’re at in their lives - those about to go travelling, those teaching themselves how to grow their own food in a cramped city, those who are learning how to be happier than they were when they first pulled the chair out. 

I have also found some of my favourite books in this way. One of them was The Sweetness of Life - Le Sel de la Vie, written by an anthropologist called Françoise Héritier and translated from French by Anthea Bell. It is a glorious, life-affirming list really. I buy it for everyone who works too hard and lives too little. That’s what I was doing  when I found it. Sometimes I’ve thought I’d love to be friends with whoever left certain assortments of books. One of my best friends and I, Richard Scott, the first time we hung out, went to England's National Poetry Library and chose three books for each other that we thought would be unfamiliar.
 
Libraries, are public places, but also private: a chance for us to sit and read anonymously - without anyone familiar to us seeing what tangent we're following, or what we wish to alter, understand or enhance about ourselves. I see so many wellbeing and mental health books left on desks. Not taken out to be read in front of others, but read here.
 
Today has been a little like a day off school. I was meant to be sitting a diving exam, but it’s been canceled, so I am translating a Latvian poem instead. It’s by Vizma Belševica, with a translation by Inga Gaile - and is part of the open and incredible work of Modern Poetry in Translation magazine. It’s an online, free workshop, that can be done at anytime. A much better puzzle to solve than a crossword or Sudoku. The literal translation is there, with notes, tempting and waiting for me - so I am going to set to.