The Albion Beatnik Bookstore website (or how to change a light bulb in a tight space on a ladder)

The web page of the Albion Beatnik Bookstore, based once in Oxford, then Sibiu, always neo-bankrupt, now closed for business: atavistic and very analogue, its musings and misspells on books and stuff.

Category Archives: poetry

‘Closed For Business As Usual’

This first pic is a study in the dishonesty of perspective: my fat arse shielding the even fatter arse of Oxford-based writer Dan Holloway, both of us in pursuit of … Continue reading

2nd February 2018 · 4 Comments

Ungaretti’s Typewriter

A new addition to the Beatnik landscape: Ungaretti’s Typewriter. Customers (all two of them) are invited to type any random thought, flow of consciousness dribble, abstract or recited prose or … Continue reading

19th September 2017 · Leave a comment

Toilets (or J. Alfred Pisspot)

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock hangs on the inside of the shop toilet door. It would be included in any anthology of poetry read best in the loo and, … Continue reading

26th August 2017 · Leave a comment

Heathcote Williams: The Local Polemic

Painted fluorescent over two walls of the Albion Beatnik loo is Heathcote Williams’ poem ‘Books’. The poem was written perhaps eight or nine years ago. Heathcote Williams died recently, undoubtedly … Continue reading

23rd August 2017 · Leave a comment

Everything Wrong With You Is Beautiful

I’ve always liked Tina Sederholm’s poetry. There is a plumb line weighted with honesty that cuts through it, and she probes either side of its divide. Her whole craft is … Continue reading

3rd June 2017 · Leave a comment

Filming Bernard O’Donoghue Read ‘Connolly’s Bookshop’

Bernard O’Donoghue’s poetry collection The Seasons of Cullen Church (Faber, 2016) is lyrical and observant, an elegiac lament, beautiful so often, riddled with memories of a childhood spent near Cork. … Continue reading

14th March 2017 · Leave a comment

Let’s Talk of Graves, of Worms, & Epitaphs; Make Dust our Paper…

So here’s a nice little copy sold yesterday of George Herbert’s The Temple & A Priest to the Temple, Everyman edition, the binding slightly shaky but from a time when … Continue reading

4th January 2017 · Leave a comment

A Privy Culprit of Poetry Readings

What is the collective noun for poets? I was asked that recently and was rather stumped for an answer. It’s been like Radio 4’s Any Questions recently, and not so … Continue reading

5th June 2016 · Leave a comment

Bernard O’Donoghue’s Connolly’s Bookshop

Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women