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Tags: Archeology, Conservation, Books, Cornwall, Archives, History, Collections
Patricia Eschen Prize for Poetry 2022 – Winners announced!
Penelope Shuttle described the process as a “fascinating and educative experience” and went on to say that “reading the poems was exhilarating and often profoundly moving.”
The poems were judged anonymously, so the judges were excited to discover that they had chosen such an international shortlist with poets hailing from all over the world, as far afield as Christchurch (New Zealand), Lagos (Nigeria) and Florida (U.S.A) with plenty of poets from across the U.K. too and one of the shortlist a Morrab Library member from Penzance.
We thought we’d tell you a little bit more about the competition winning poets and also share clips of the poets reading their winning poems in their own voices at our hybrid event which took place at The Exchange in Penzance earlier this month.
Camilla Lambert
Camilla Lambert was awarded first prize for her poem ‘Gifts from a Lithic Lover’. You can read the poem here or watch Camilla reading her poem here.
Cornwall has been a major source of inspiration for Camilla’s writing, stemming from time spent over the years with family on both the north and south coasts of Cornwall. This was reflected in her winning poem and Katrina Naomi introduced the poem by saying: “This poem does some amazing things around love, around geology, around the days of the week. It makes me think of a week very differently to how I used to think of a week. There’s so much imagination. There’s a bit of Cornwall, alongside places all around the world in this poem. It’s very imaginative and shows real ambition. And for Penny and I, it was a clear winner”.
She began writing poetry in 2007 on retirement from being an NHS manager. Since then she has had individual poems published in poetry journals, organises an arts festival in Sussex and had her pamphlet Grapes in the Crater published in 2015. She is now working on her full collection.
Marjory Woodfield
Second prize was awarded to Marjory Woodfield from Christchurch New Zealand for her poem ‘Sails Catch the Wind’. You can read the poem here or watch Marjory read the poem here. As Marjory explained at the awards ceremony, the prompt for her poem was a bowl from a shipwreck with a gazelle on it which was found by the husband of her former landlady in Singapore, a shipwreck diver.
Penelope Shuttle introduced the poem at the event: “Here we have a lyric poem, beautiful and delicate as the Chinese porcelain, whose journey from raw clay to finished, painted bowl, is beautifully described. There’s a lost ship. There’s porcelain fished up from the sea. There’s the painted gazelles on the bowl. This poem […] conveys the vulnerability and beauty of the world and, by lovely implication, all of us here on earth”.
Anna Remennik
The third prize winner in the Patricia Eschen Prize for Poetry 2022 was Anna Remennik from California (U.S.A) for her poem ‘Kyiv, spring 1986’. You can read the poem here or watch Anna reading the poem aloud here.
Anna grew up in Soviet-era Kiev (now Kyiv, Ukraine) and is now a chemical engineer working in Silicon Valley. She enjoys writing poems about automatic titrators, technical supply chain processes, and occasionally even more fantastical things.
Anna added: “Although I wrote this poem a couple of years ago, it’s been especially in my mind with everything that’s going on currently”.
Children’s competition:
Penelope and Katrina were both truly “wowed” by the quality of the poems in the children’s category.
Penelope Shuttle said “The standard of the children’s poetry was exceptionally high. Well done all! And congratulations to the teachers for giving their students, however young, deep access to the imagination, and the power of articulation.”
The children’s competition received over 200 submissions and the judges were so impressed by the calibre of entries that they decided to appoint joint second and joint third prize winners, generously supported by the Dennis Myner Trust.
Dexter Warburton, aged 13, won second prize for her poem called ‘A Boy Talking To A Robot In The Future About Where He Lives’ which you can read here. Caterina Williams was awarded joint second prize for her poem ‘The Flow of Words’, which you can read here.
The judges loved the form of the joint third prize winner, 7 year old Ziva Patel’s poem, ‘Refugees’ which you can read here. 9 year old Benjamin Williams, younger brother of Caterina Williams, was the joint third prize winner for his poem ‘Nonsense Safari’ – the judges particularly loved the rhymes in this poem which you can read for yourself here.
You can read many the highly commended poems, in the adult’s and children’s category, on the website here.
Morrab Library, The Dennis Myner Trust and our judges would like to congratulate all of the shortlist poets and say a big thank you to everyone who took the time to enter the competition!
Can you help us? In search of a new Honorary Treasurer
We are seeking new Honorary Treasurer with experience, knowledge, commitment and enthusiasm to join our management committee and support our work.
Being a trustee is a voluntary role and we welcome applications from people from all walks of life. It is not necessary for Trustees to be expert in all areas of governance, but we have to ensure that collectively the Management Committee has the skills and experience to operate effectively and to support the Librarian and her team. Training and support is available and through our membership of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations our trustees have access to up to date information and a range of learning opportunities.
All members of the management Committee:
- Commit to the core vision of the ML to inspire members of the community through books, archival materials and events within a unique tranquil space for learning, reflection, creation and making new connections
- Contribute their skills and expertise to the Management Committee’s collective decision making
- Positively promote the ML and act as an advocate for the organisation
- Support the ML’s income generation initiatives including the search for funding
- Accept the legal duties and responsibility of trusteeship
- Devote the necessary time to the role, including attending Zoom and face to face meetings, supporting the Librarian and, on occasion, attending events
The Treasurer role is a specialist position encompassing the following duties:
- Providing financial advice to the MMC
- Chairing the Finance Sub Committee
- Providing professional direction and training to the bookkeeper, and providing information to her as required, including bank statements and PayPal reports
- Supervising month end reconciliations, running reports in Sage and producing monthly management accounts
- Carrying out year-end reconciliations and adjustments in Sage (e.g., value of investments, fixed assets register)
- Supporting production of the Annual Report and Accounts, working with our accountants
- Submitting annual Charity Commission Return
- Ensuring an appropriate budget is approved in advance of each year
- Ensuring appropriate financial systems, procedures, payroll and banking arrangements are in place and all mandates are up to date
- Acting as system administrator for Sage, Square etc.
- Checking payroll each month and dealing with changes to pay, including annual pay awards
- Providing oversight of investment management arrangements
- Ensuring suitable insurance is in place
- Overseeing Gift Aid claims.
The estimated time commitment is around 2-3 days a month, with some extra input required to produce the accounts (Jan/Feb) and set the budget, agree the pay award etc (Nov/Dec).
The trustees meet on the first Tuesday of every month either by Zoom or in person. The finance committee meets quarterly. Working groups are occasionally formed for specific projects and meet on an ad hoc basis.
We may be open to splitting the role between the high-level advice/strategy element and the financial and management accounting, including the reconciliations etc. if the right candidates come forward.
If you are interested in finding out more about the role of the Treasurer, please get in touch by email to secretary@morrablibrary.org.uk in the first instance, telling us about your skills and why you are interested in joining us.
Cataloguing the library books – a volunteer’s perspective
The library is undertaking a mammoth exercise to digitise it’s library card index catalogue, and convert it into a searchable online resource. Our team have recently added the 5,000th record. One of our volunteers, Ruth Baigent, gives us a brilliant insight into what that work involves, and her mixed feelings on taking it on!
Ruth at work, with the index card catalogue to her left
Cataloguing for Morrab Library means scanning barcodes and checking and entering information, such as publisher details about each book and its library location, onto the new library database, the KOHA library system. We add a barcode sticker to the book with its library number, and each book gets a little gold sticker to indicate that it has been “KOHA-ed”. We started with the library’s various Fiction collections, and I am currently working through Children’s Fiction. I’ve been involved from early days, and we are now past the 5000 book target, with a huge quantity of Non-Fiction volumes to tackle next! There is a small team of us, and we usually work alone, quietly, at different times, and, though there are plans to have a get together at some point, there are still a few of us that have not met yet.
Number 5000!
The library is a tranquil and peaceful place to work. The atmosphere is calm, and it is good to be surrounded by the old timbers, wall to wall books, spacious rooms, and large windows overlooking the eucalyptus trees and other beautiful plants in the sub-tropical Morrab Gardens. I first joined the library when I was about 23, and I have to say it hasn’t changed much over the two decades since, and all changes, such as the library extension, have been unobtrusive.
We all love books, of course, and we all love the old card system the library has in place too. I feel traitorous in some ways, adding the books to a computer database which will supersede the cards and card catalogues, the old pockets and date stamps which libraries just don’t use any more (although I hope Morrab Library will keep up with the date stamps!). The old ways of the public library have changed quite rapidly over the last 20-30 years, but I remember them from my school days, for instance, when we all joined a waiting list for “Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret?” by Judy Blume. I waited for weeks and weeks, my name added to the long list on a piece of paper held by the librarian. The book would come in, and the next person on the list was notified. The book was stamped and the ticket placed in our little ticket pouch. It was so exciting! That was at a time when everyone said “shush!” when someone spoke and libraries were spaces for peace rather than community. Morrab Library does integrate both, though. Peace is respected, and there is a vibrant community at the same time.
Hopefully introducing the virtual catalogue will be equally unobtrusive, without losing the “life” of the systems. A virtual catalogue means we are able to search for books, to see where they are: are they on the shelves, have they been taken out, have they been reserved, are they off the shelves for conservation? How long have they been taken out for? Are they coming back? These are all important questions! Questions which can be answered very easily when we use a database. So I do see the point. But the card catalogues are so lovely, nothing will truly replace them.
As I’m working, I love looking at the books and seeing when they were taken out, the long lists of dates due back – each date speaks to me of the person who took that book out. It is a beautiful community which I feel a part of. Sometimes, there is a completely blank list of dates. Some books have clearly never been taken out, or never read. I love these books even more, and long to read them. I’d like to start up a children’s book reading club, where we pick these books and read them each week but I wonder if the children wouldn’t be interested in the mysterious unselected books which I’m attracted to!
The books I love are those promising a magical story of nature and mystery, scattered with wood block prints, and detailed pictures relating to the story, even if obliquely! As a child, I would stare at prints such as these for hours, before TV really became a big feature in my life. Staring at these pictures as I read, I’d notice that oftentimes, the picture didn’t relate to the story — for instance, the story would say the girl was dressed one way, and she would be dressed quite differently in the picture — and I would wonder at how the picture came to be that way… The mysteries of the publishing industry and illustration commissioning were filled with deeper meaning for me… the how? and why? weren’t questions I expected (or wanted) mundane answers to. I simply dwelled in the richness of the mystery of these strange discrepancies. These were things done by other people and understanding eluded me, the mysterious world of Adults described so well by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in “Le Petit Prince.” Though I have more answers now, I try to hold on to the mystery, and I remember it so well when I am amongst those children’s books, like the ones I used to surround myself with as a child.
Sometimes it is difficult to put the barcode sticker onto the page, as it feels like vandalism, but I also know that it’s nice to find books where a child has drawn or that have notes of dedication, or a bookmark, because it’s nice to think of those who were there before us. The Morrab stamps and stickers thus become part of the book’s history, and add to the interest, rather than detract from it. We will be history ourselves, one day, I hope.
A page from ‘The Adventures of Mary Barbara’ by Angusine MacGregor and May Byron (date unknown)
There are some ancient books from the turn of the 20th century with no publisher information on them, hinting at a time when books were just books, and there were few enough of them that we didn’t need to know who published them, especially if we were children. It’s so vastly different from today, when book publication can feel like consumerism gone mad.