One Night Stanzas

The amazing GiftED book sculptures at the Scottish Poetry Library.

I’m guessing that, since you’re reading this blog, you like books really quite a lot. Therefore, you’ve probably heard about GiftED, the series of sculptures made out of old books and gifted to various literary landmarks around Edinburgh. But just in case you haven’t, here’s the lowdown: over the past eighteen months, these beautiful, intricate book-based paper sculptures have been popping up in places like the Central Library, Filmhouse Cinema and the SPL itself. Nothing is known about the uber-talented creator of these objects, except that she’s a lady. Oh, and she’s on a valiant one-woman crusade to save libraries and keep people reading. In other words: this person is my heroine.

GiftED has been on tour around Scotland over the past few months, much to the delight of every bookish Scottish person ever. It’s just ended its run with a few days on show at the Scottish Poetry Library, and I was lucky enough to be able to go along twice to see these ten wonderful pieces on show all in the same space. Here are some photos of just a few:

After two visits and I-don’t-know-how-many circuits of the exhibition, I finally, painfully, picked a favourite — and it’s the T Rex. As with all the sculptures, every time I looked at him I saw something else: the words interlaced between his jaws, the tiny men in the page-forest trying to take him down, and — my favourite part — his wee tail sticking out of the back of the book! Magic.

I also loved the dragon-baby. I thought it was such a nice physical metaphor for a book being born! He’s super cute, too. On my first visit to GiftED I was accompanied by the ladies from the women’s community support group I’ve been working with, and they were utterly enchanted by the whole thing. A few of us spent a while speculating over whether the dragon is nestled inside a real egg or not — is it an ostrich egg, maybe? It looks so real, we just couldn’t be sure.

I love the words that are carefully highlighted inside the gramophone… “towards dark.” This sculptor definitely has a penchant for the eerie and unheimlich!

This was the one my group picked as their definite favourite. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been discussing poetry and the ways in which it can be used to help us understand the world, work through difficult times, celebrate happy times, etc. Many of the ladies in the group had never read a poem before in their lives, and therefore were understandably nervous at the start. But they saw this sculpture and loved it. One of them said, “that’s how I feel about books now — like you can be sheltered by them.” Result!

This — the Poetree — was the first sculpture, the one that started all the (totally deserved) hype. The exhibition (and its accompanying promotional book) contained an illustrated guide to making your own poetree! My favourite instruction: “inconsistencies add charm.” A good motto for life, methinks.

“Nothing beats a nice cup of tea (or coffee) and a really great book.” She speaks the truth! If you want to see the other sculptures (and er, much better photos of the ones featured here!) you can head over to the photostream of the wonderful Chris Scott, who, quite rightly, has become their de facto official photographer!

Having an ethical, hopefully-Amazon-free Christmas

I don’t want to sound too judge-y here, but you guys… is it me, or has Christmas become a time for assholeish behaviour? This assholeishness is weird, since Christmas is supposed to be all about being selfless and nice! It seems that, at Christmastime, some people become weird Mr-Hyde-type versions of themselves as far as all things greed and consumption are concerned. Christmas is the time of year when we do things like stuff a bird into a slightly bigger bird and then stuff both those birds into a slightly-bigger-again bird, roast, and then scoff so much of the resulting Frankenbird that for the rest of the day we can’t do anything more taxing than occasionally nibble the edge of an enormous Toblerone. We spend a bazillion pounds each on a bazillion presents, usually from massive high-street and internet conglomorates who dazzle us with their sparkly TV ads (if I see that goddamn awful Brad Pitt Chanel No. 5 ad again I may smash Lovely Boyfriend’s beloved UberTV to bits). We buy presents for people we don’t even like because we feel like we have to. We send 1.5 billion Christmas cards TO LANDFILL for chrissakes. Sorry to sound like the world’s biggest Scrooge, but it’s effed up, y’all. It’s time to OCCUPY CHRISTMAS!

OK, maybe that’s a bit radical for the moment. But still — this year I have been trying to stick to the following Christmas rules:

- Buy second hand wherever possible
- Buy local wherever possible
- If you can’t buy local or second hand, at least buy from an independent business or charity org
- No sweatshop labour
- No animal cruelty
- No waste
- No Amazon purchases

I’m now pretty much finished with my Christmas shopping, and I know I’ve broken my rules a bit already. For example: I bought a box of chocolates for some of my workmates that I know has dairy in it, so animal cruelty (*cries*). I can’t go into more specifics right now without giving away what other presents I’ve bought, but I might do a re-cap post-Christmas and evaluate how I did! In the meantime, I’m doing crafty, waste-free stuff like wrapping my gifts in old brown paper bags and pre-used wrapping paper (see photo above — I’ve been saving all year from birthdays etc!) and making present tags out of last year’s Christmas cards (see photo below). I’m feeling super righteous, very crafty, and really unusually rich for this time of year as a result!

The new issue of The Edinburgh Review: #136, aka No Shouting Out.

This isn’t just making the list because I have a review in it, but, well… I have a review in it! This is my fourth contribution to The Edinburgh Review in twelve issues, and I’m really happy that they keep accepting my work! I love the publication, especially since Alan Gillis took over the role of Editor-in-Chief — he’s doing fantastic work. Look how pretty this issue is!

My review is on Kerry Hardie’s most recent collection, The Oak & The Ash & The Wild Cherry Tree. Hardie is hands-down one of my all-time favourite poets ever ever ever, so needless to say, my review is pretty glowing. You should all seriously buy this book straight away, because it is brilliant. It’s about ageing and death and nature and birds and skies and trees and memory and it’s GREAT! Get it, get it one and all.

Want to read more? Well, you’ll have to buy The Edinburgh Review, then! Except the issue’s so new, it seems to be not-available-online-yet. It will be, though — keep an eye on the site. There are a million other (better!) reasons to buy a copy too, of course — Hannah McGill has a GREAT short story in here, and the fantabulous Jen Hadfield has written a highly right-on review of William Letford’s Bevel. Hey, why not go the whole hog and get a subscription?! So worth it, trust me, and they’d love and appreciate your support for sure! If you’re in Edinburgh, you can also keep an eye out for the issue in bookstores, including the wonderful Word Power.

What are YOU loving this week?

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You can also visit Read This Press for more poetry (and typewriter paraphernalia!). Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

Remember this post? I said at the end of it that I wasn’t going to make ONS All About Poetry any more… so here’s a totally-not-poetry-related post for your viewing pleasure. NB: you should still totally read it.

So… you guys all recycle, right? RIGHT? I like to assume that everyone does, to some extent, because if I did not assume that, I would probably cry and potentially slap people. But although I think most people really genuinely do recycle, it’s pretty likely that right now, most folk are doing the bare minimum they can get away with, ’cause that’s what we humans like to do. HOWEVER, there are several little teeny tiny changes you can make to your recycling habits that will totally make the planet love you more.

1. Recycle the paper off your tin cans
For ages, I used to just chuck used tin cans (that once held beans, soup, etc) into my local recycling bin. Then I read somewhere that — vexingly — sometimes a tin can’t be recycled if it still has food waste in the bottom. This led me to start washing the tins out, usually after doing my washing up — just giving them a quick rinse to make sure they’d definitely stay out of landfill.
One night I was feeling extremely lazy and could not be bothered to go through this process. Instead, after I finished haphazardly washing the dishes, I just dunked the tin cans into the remaining washing-up water and went off to do more fun things. I then forgot about them, and the next morning, got up to find that their labels had unpeeled in the night and were floating atop the now-quite-minging water.
OK, gross, I know. BUT this did mean that I could fish the paper labels out of the sink, leave them to dry off, and then put them into the paper recycling bin. I recently read Edinburgh City Council’s latest recycling handbook and it turns out they actually advise people to do this. Nowadays I always remove the paper labels from cans while washing them out. It takes about fifteen seconds and means double the recycled-ness.

2. Put your envelopes in the right bin!
DID YOU KNOW: you’re not supposed to put paper envelopes in with other paper recycling? ‘Cause I didn’t, until very very recently. Apparently, the gum used to seal envelopes is tricky stuff to get rid of, and paper that’s had the gum on it can’t be recycled as a result. Similarly, window envelopes have glue AND plastic involved. Putting them in with your other paper products means the whole lot could potentially end up in landfill, which makes small furry creatures everywhere very sad indeed.
BUT you can recycle these pesky envelopes — you just need to put them into the right bin. The gum and plastic interferes with the density and purity of recycled paper, but recycled cardboard can cope with it just fine. Therefore, you should put your envelopes in with your cardboard, tins and plastic, where they will be happily accepted into the arms of some big magical machine that turns junk products into shiny new recycled things.

3. Give unwanted stuff to small, indie charity shops.
As a wide-eyed young teenager, I used to volunteer on Saturday afternoons for a Cancer Research charity shop. Even then, before I became a hardcore vegan pain-in-the-ass greenie, I was a bit shocked by the things we apparently “had” to throw out… but as the years passed I convinced myself that times must have a-changed for charity shops. Well… yes and no. Although it does depend on the charity, I recently discovered that many of the larger charity shop chains still have ludicrously strict rules about what they can and cannot sell. Many can’t sell electronic items, or they won’t take clothing or fabrics that are marked, however faintly. Toys and furniture often need to come complete with their original safety labels in order to be accepted. And so on, and so forth.
If you’ve been taking your old togs to a big charity’s thrift store for years, panic not: they don’t just shove everything into landfill. Even in my distant volunteering days, a shadowy figure called The Rag Man used to come around every week or so and take away for recycling any fabric items unfit for sale, and this is still common practice. Also, you can improve your chances of your items being actually sold by taking them into the store during opening hours (many big charities won’t sell on items that have been left on the doorstep for health and safety reasons — a badger might have gnawed on them, or something). But an even better thing to do would be to seek out a smaller, less high-profile charity shop to send your stuff to.
Edinburgh has several such places — there are stores for the St Columba’s Hospice; two Birthlink thrift shops in the Tollcross area; and my personal favourites, the Hospices of Hope shops. Case in point: I recently bought a tablecloth from the Tollcross Hospices of Hope shop, which was priced super low because it was covered in blotches of candlewax (like, really covered). No big charity shop would have put it on sale, but hey — candlewax is super easy to get out, as the Hospices of Hope ladies clearly know. I was able to get a very cute tablecloth for a bargainous price, and they made money for their charity. Smaller charities = less picky = more and better recycling!

4. Find new ways to use old stuff.
Every so often you end up with an item to throw away that you’re not really sure what to do with. A piece of particularly weird packaging, say, or a household item that’s come to the end of a long life. What do you do when you suddenly have, say, a shipping pallet or the bladder out of a wine box sitting in your kitchen? Answer: get thee to Google and look up [item] + “alternative uses.” I promise you, you will be amazed.
Examples? How many of you have a ton of wine bottles sitting around at home? (Don’t lie!) What about vinyl records too scratched to play? An old metal strainer, maybe? Binder clips? Or even — seriously — unused condoms and tampons! THE POSSIBILITIES REALLY ARE ENDLESS!

5. Stop buying new stuff.
I’m actually properly serious. When you buy new, you are almost always:
- Endorsing sweat shop labour
- Endorsing needless animal testing
- Endorsing the use of fossil fuels
- Endorsing dodgy business practices in general
- Paying a huge mark-up on your items
Sorry to get all heavy-handed hippie on your ass, but really. Second hand stores, vintage shops and flea markets are no longer the someone-died-in-this dives they once were. In fact, they’re trendy. Some of them are like boutiques, even! And then there’s eBay. And Freecycle and Freegle, where you get things FOR FREE! Or Gumtree, where you get them for super cheap! These days, 98% of my belongings are second hand and my lifestyle really hasn’t noticed — except I’m way less poor. Win-win, amirite? Pretty much the only things I buy new now are underwear (but only ’cause charity shops don’t stock it!), occasionally books, and stuff that’s local or made by small businesses or craftspeople (hello, Etsy!). Do I sound preachy? WELL GOOD, I AM PREACHING AT YOU. Stop spending money you don’t have on shit you don’t need — the planet will love you!

Got any particularly good DIY or upcycling tips? Recycling solutions? Want to call me a smelly hippie and pelt me with tofu? Head south for the comments box!

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You can also visit Read This Press for more poetry (and typewriter paraphernalia!). Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

(Photo credit)