One Night Stanzas

There’s a great big sale on at Edinburgh Vintage! Over a third of the entire store is reduced in that sale, with more items being added all the time. Here are ten cool items that might be particularly tempting to all you writerly types…

1. First edition Maya Angelou poetry collection
The literary world lost A GIANT in Maya Angelou. This collection of poems — one of her best — proves it.

2. An antique leaded crystal and solid silver inkwell, dated 1906
OK, you may not actually use a quill pen… but all writers have pretentions, right?

3. A fancy vintage bookmark.
You can never have too many of these things. And this one is in the $10 clearance section!

4. A really, really swish cup of tea.
Or coffee. Or whatever hot tasty beverage keeps you going through a marathon writing session. Have it in this very pretty cup!

5. A rather suave pocket watch.
All writers need a timepiece, to keep an eye on how much they’re procrastinating! Might as well be a super cool Soviet era pocketwatch…

6. A wise old owl…
…to store some pennies in. Sorry, it’s true: most writers are poor. You need this.

7. A retro pocketbook.
When did they stop making these? They’re wallets, but with a space for a little notebook! This one even has a Latin inscription.

8. A literary souvenir…
(From Paris, obv, one of the great literary cities of the world.)

9. …or two.
(Or from London, which is another one!)

10. Some kitsch classic literature…
…complete with cute illustrations.

Over 600 items in the shop — EV also has a Facebook page and a Twitter — and I’d appreciate you forever if you’d go and send me some love!

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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!

A little more shameless self promotion — yesterday, you got to hear about my vintage store, Edinburgh Vintage. Today, it’s the turn of my other Etsy store, Read This Press, which is much more suitable for poetic gift-giving!

For over two years I was the founding editor of Read This Magazine, a grassroots arts and literature zine aimed at promoting the work of new, young and emerging writers. After our editors scattered to the four winds in 2010, I wanted to carry on the work of RT in some way that would allow me to manage the workload alone (I know, some folk edit magazines single-handedly. I genuinely have no idea how).

Read This Press was born. We (as my team has now expanded to include Stephen Welsh, aka Lovely Boyfriend) make small, limited edition runs of handmade poetry chapbooks, make them as pretty as we can and sell them for a teeny price in the hope that we can lure some non-poetry readers in our direction and trick them into seeing that poetry is actually awesome. Our most recent endeavour was an anthology of poems inspired by the great Allen Ginsberg, Starry Rhymes, which you can buy here. We also published Eric Hamilton’s Sharks Don’t Sleep, which is sadly sold out.

Skin Deep, our first Read This Press title: an anthology of tattoo-related poems by talented folks like Kim Addonizio and Kevin Cadwallender.

To support the press, I also started making typewriter-related jewellery and accessories, in collaboration with Amanda of Reworkd Workshop. As a typewriter fanatic, though, I found it heart-wrenching to think of all the beautiful machines that had been ripped up in order to create our bracelets and necklaces (no, really). I gave up the jewellery-making a while ago, but the pieces I have leftover from my jewellery days are still for sale on the site — and there are others yet to be listed, so keep checking back!

The Camel Necklace, currently for sale here.

As the Christmas shopping frenzy is upon us, I’ll be uploading new items as often as I can in the next little while. If you like what you see in the shop, stick around and check back regularly. Please note: I am totally open to handing out mates’ discounts, so drop me a line if you see something you fancy and I may well be willing to haggle! Enquiries to claire[at]onenightstanzas[dot]com.

Merry Christmas Shopping!