One of mine is to find in a bookstore a writer I have never previously known. The writer could be very famous indeed, but if I have never even heard of her before, then the pleasure is acute. It’s a discovery, like finding a perfectly shaped stone. Someone else could have found that stone. In fact, it’s likely that many people before me have. Sometimes many, many people. Yet there is something unique about the experience, something personal.
A few hours before flying from London to Bangalore, my cousin and I walked into a secondhand bookstore on the way to the tube station. It was a Books for Amnesty outfit, whose proceeds go to Amnesty International. I found a lot of lovely books there, but I also found a book by John Haines called The Stone Harp. I’d never heard of Haines before, but the poems I read in that book in that bookstore were extraordinary. The book was rather expensive for a secondhand (non-first edition) copy. When I asked the cashier, he said it was because they match their prices online. So I got the feeling that it was a hard-to-find if not rare copy. I bought the book.
Deepika Arwind and Biswamit Dwibedy will be reading from their work at Crossword, Bangalore, on the 8th of July.
Anindita Sengupta will be reading from, and launching, her new book of poems, City of Water, at Crossword on the 7th of May. Following the reading she will be in conversation with Sridala Swami. 