Collecting is a strange thing. It’s sometimes hard to explain why one does it. For example, I like things to do with chickens. So I have prints, statues, sculptures, plates, even a pair of bookends featuring chooks.

So too with books. I have many diverse interests (more specific than just big genre-size categories: fantasy, science-fiction, historical, crime, or non-fiction like science [itself having many subcategories I collect: physics, the universe/astronomy, nature/biology, the elements, etc], history [WW1&2, British/Australian, Palestine/Israel, etc], politics, travel writing, & so on) or the work of specific favourite writers that I must own everything of theirs they write.

Sometimes I acquire small collections about topics I think I might one day write about. Thus I have numerous books about Gold, Winemaking, Christmas, Lighthouses, Chocolate, & so on.

But then there’s sets of books I’m simply compelled to buy. No matter how awful they might be. Even if I’ll never read them. Simply because they fall into one of my Pet Loves categories. They make up the matter for this poem.

The first quote that I saw upon googling for my Poetic Factoid broke me. I knew I couldn’t improve on it. Thus what you get today is pretty brief … but I hope I’ve been a little creative with its form.

*****

collectabilia: pet loves

Foxes, Wolves, Owls, Crows, Ravens
any book with these words
in the title must become mine 
   (several, several times)

Cornwall
sirensong, family ancestry, Famous Fivery
long ago looking at Land’s End in an atlas 
& wanting to watch the sun set over the sea there

Venice
love affair with a magical city
began long before i ever travelled there
spent more time in fictional Venice than La Serenissima herself

Heron
less common to come across these 
but treasure every quirky title concerning
my gangly soul spirit animal

Hare
love their wild solo madness 
many of these titles are delightfully illustrated
children’s books — which is okay by me

Booker winners
an ever growing bookcase 
chronologically filled with annual shortlistees
& winners — I’ve even read some of them

still there’s many more: Dogs, Dandelions, Bees, 
books on Eden Valley (not the one I live in
but the English one I’d like to live in)

to be honest — the list probably never ends 
just diverges into smaller 
& smaller subsets

of one

*****

Day 06 Factoid — Is book collecting is an obsession?

Jeanette Winterson wrote “Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.” Discuss. 

Ummm, 

what
               Jeannette
                                         said!