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Libraries Week - Thursday. It's National Poetry Day. Karen Smith of the National Poetry Library opens the doors to her magical library

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Manage episode 378866627 series 3505976
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‘We run a ‘Lost Quote’ service here at the National Poetry Library,’ said Karen Smith, who also told me proudly that nothing feels as natural to her as being a librarian. Lucky Karen is surrounded by poetry books, 250,000 of them to be precise. ‘People contact us all the time. Today I have had two enquiries from people who are looking for poems. Sometimes they can remember one or two lines in a poem, but they don’t know who it is by or can’t remember the rest of it. Sometimes they are looking for using it at a funeral. It is very gratifying when you find that poem for someone and they can read it at their grandfather’s funeral.’
Karen, who did a masters degree in modern poetry, is the perfect person to be a poetry detective (there’s a novel right there) and has great success, using online databases, or sometimes just good old word of mouth by asking colleagues. They used to pin it on a noticeboard, now they are going to start putting Lost Quotes on the virtual noticeboard of Twitter.
I’d bet a lot of people, myself included, had never head of the National Poetry Library, Located in the Royal Festival Hall, looking over the Thames and filled with rainbow-coloured rolling stacks, it sounds almost dreamlike.
‘Anyone can visit and it is absolutely free,’ Karen insists. ‘We’ve so many treasures here. Poetry is a distillation of words. The white space on the page is important, the pauses and the unsaid part. I think that is what makes it poignant. A poem is emotionally powerful because it means something different to everyone, you see what you want to see.’
Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.

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49 episodes

Artwork
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Manage episode 378866627 series 3505976
Content provided by Kate Thompson. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Kate Thompson or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

Send us a Text Message.

‘We run a ‘Lost Quote’ service here at the National Poetry Library,’ said Karen Smith, who also told me proudly that nothing feels as natural to her as being a librarian. Lucky Karen is surrounded by poetry books, 250,000 of them to be precise. ‘People contact us all the time. Today I have had two enquiries from people who are looking for poems. Sometimes they can remember one or two lines in a poem, but they don’t know who it is by or can’t remember the rest of it. Sometimes they are looking for using it at a funeral. It is very gratifying when you find that poem for someone and they can read it at their grandfather’s funeral.’
Karen, who did a masters degree in modern poetry, is the perfect person to be a poetry detective (there’s a novel right there) and has great success, using online databases, or sometimes just good old word of mouth by asking colleagues. They used to pin it on a noticeboard, now they are going to start putting Lost Quotes on the virtual noticeboard of Twitter.
I’d bet a lot of people, myself included, had never head of the National Poetry Library, Located in the Royal Festival Hall, looking over the Thames and filled with rainbow-coloured rolling stacks, it sounds almost dreamlike.
‘Anyone can visit and it is absolutely free,’ Karen insists. ‘We’ve so many treasures here. Poetry is a distillation of words. The white space on the page is important, the pauses and the unsaid part. I think that is what makes it poignant. A poem is emotionally powerful because it means something different to everyone, you see what you want to see.’
Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.

  continue reading

49 episodes

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