Earlier this week, the news broke that Albion Beatnik is closed.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t absolutely
gutted, but I know Dennis Harrison has given his all to the shop; it’s a wonder he's kept going for so long, working the hours he does.
I worked in the book trade in Belfast and Manchester
for a while and I’ve been a frequenter of bookshops since my early teens. Albion Beatnik was the stand-out one for me and very likely always will be. It had a
combination of outsider curiosity, erudition, quirkiness and downright
homeliness. It was also the social glue for many different communities. We are,
I often think, like Venn diagrams. We overlap from time to time, but we don’t
always meet. Dennis must have had a remarkable overview.
Sadly, I can’t make the 'last gasp' reading tomorrow, but I do
want to take this opportunity to thank Dennis for adding so substantially to the
quality of our lives in so many random ways.
Saturday 10th February at 7:30 pm
Free entry
Rory Waterman and US poet Richard
Robbins
Rory was born in Belfast in 1981,
grew up in rural Lincolnshire, and lives in Nottingham where he is Senior
Lecturer in English at Nottingham Trent University. His first collection of
poetry, Tonight The Summer's Over, was a Poetry Book Society
Recommendation and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Prize. His latest
collection, Sarajevo Roses, has just been published by Carcanet.
34 Walton Street
Oxford OX2 6AA
Phone: 07737 876213
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