National Poetry Day at the EFL!

It seems appropriate that we have a little shout-out to National Poetry Day from the English Faculty Library. I’ve noticed a lot of poetry books coming in to the library lately. So in the interest of sharing a poem, as suggested by the National Poetry Day initiative, I’d like to share with you some of the inner workings of our poetry collection (as well as a special little surprise) and what exactly the EFL trainee does with our poetry.

As the graduate trainee at the EFL, part of my job is doing physical processing on all the new books that arrive at in our collection (stickers, stamps, and covers). As a result, I’m lucky enough to get my hands on new books before anyone else, including our shiny new poetry books. I noticed lately a lot of books coming in labelled ‘PBS’, so I did some digging.

Here at Bodleian Libraries we have institutional membership with the Poetry Book Society. The PBS was founded by T.S. Eliot in 1953, with the aim ‘to propagate the art of poetry’. They’re like a book club that deliver brand new poetry books and magazines to their members every quarter. Simply put, we get a curated selection of contemporary poetry straight to our shelves.

The autumn selection of books includes:

• Auguries of a Minor God by Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe
• A Year in the New Life by Jack Underwood
• The Kids by Hannah Lowe
• Virga by Togara Mazanenhamo
• All the Names Given by Raymond Antrobus

Part of my job also involves preparing incoming periodicals to the library (more stickers, stamps, and covers!). For the more classic poetry fans, you may want to know that we also have a subscription to Yeats Annual – a periodical publication full of advanced research essays on the work and life of the canonical Irish Poet, W. B. Yeats. Each edition is intriguingly different in physicality and contents, and illustrations and photographs are ubiquitous in the later copies. Though publication has been delayed in recent years, we have a shelf full of these just waiting for the eager Yeats scholar to peruse.

Yes, I’m saving the best until last. One final thing that is eminently worth knowing about poetry at the EFL – one thing that I didn’t even know until today – is that there is a poem written about the English Faculty Library! U. A. Fanthorpe’s poem, In The English Faculty Library, Oxford is published in her New and Collected Poems (which is available to borrow from our collection).

“It is a charnelhouse. The quick and young
Choke on the breath of refractory clay.

Down in the cellars the dead men grumble
Resenting, resisting the patterns
We make of their bones.”

Fanthorpe, U. A., and Carol Ann. Duffy. New and Collected Poems. London: Enitharmon, 2010. Print. p.109