This Thursday is the first meeting of a poetry class I’m teaching at Kilns College. (There is still room if you want to register!) I’m asking my students to buy their books from a local bookstore and bring me a receipt, and so I haven’t announced the titles of the books before the start of class. My hope is that the students will browse the local shop, enjoy it, and purchase more of their books there in the future.

Local books, local bikes, local beer…there are certain products that benefit from the wisdom of local guides and local relationships. Writing poems can feel like an isolated experience, but reading poems in community, just as shopping in community, can, in the words of one of our mystery poets, be described thus:

“…entered / the sound everywhere, gathered like glass, boozy with gold.”