Day two of the Shore to Shore tour: summer solstice, 17 hours of daylight and the promise of a strawberry moon if we are lucky. Poets and poetry, baggage, books, trumpet, garklein flute, horn and crumhorn are slotted into the minibus, and we launch ourselves into a dreich morning – “out of the swing of the sea” – on our way to Bath.
Carol Ann Duffy has devised a game to keep us occupied on this four-hour journey. We have to decide which (dead) poets would choose to Leave, and which Remain, with opinions backed by quotes from the work. It all begins well enough: Donne (“No man is an island”), Larkin (“Get out as quickly as you can”), Stevie Smith, (“I was much too far out all my life”), but quickly descends to “Brexit, pursued by a bear”. The conversation turns to Shakespeare instead.
As we travel east, the sun breaks through. Passing the Bath Rugby club, Gillian Clarke draws on her vast cultural knowledge to tell us that the team’s song includes the advice: “Always piss on the Welsh side of the bridge” and Carol Ann, in good voice, provides the tune. So we come in, singing, to a city dipped in honey.
We are in Bath to support the local independent bookseller, the lovely Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights, which has its 10th birthday this year. Its young owners are Nic and Juliette Bottomley, who gave up jobs as lawyers in London and Prague to do what they really love. They call it “opinionated bookselling”, making recommendations, handpicking books for their readers.
Joining us this evening is the poet RV Bailey. She is a magnetic presence on stage, and her poems, including the wonderful British Red Cross and Learning in the Library are greeted with sighs of recognition, whoops and cheers from the full house. Each poet who reads creates, for those minutes, a distinct world, and yet the voices fit together like a jigsaw. At the end of the evening, everyone is floored by the standing ovation. Light is still pouring in through the stained glass of the United Central Reformed Church.
Backstage, on the noticeboard, is a list of items needed for the food bank: tinned fruit, cartons of tomatoes, instant mashed potatoes and noodles. The poetry and the list belong in the same world. They are needed in the same world. There is a reason why people from the audience are hugging Jackie Kay, crying on RV Bailey’s shoulder and having books signed for people they love.
As we leave, the clouds open to offer us the gift of a strawberry moon.
