We had an insight during one of our events that we thought might be worth sharing in our New Arrivals email. At the end of the evening, when the crowd was milling about, a few of the poets (two younger poets) started to stack our chairs and tidy up the room. We had planned on doing this after everyone left or, more likely, leave it until Monday morning like normal people. These two poets just got right down to work, even moving our stock tables back to the centre of the room, so we started to help them. Other folks kept chatting. These poets, they didn’t have to do it, but they DID do it, and that mattered. Getting the shop ready for an event and returning it to a shop again is part of the leg-work of our bookshop, and it meant so much to us that afterward we discussed a new classification of event goers as “chair-stackers,” meaning the kind of people that, after the social business is done, stick around voluntarily to make sure the campsite is in good shape.
We’re not writing this down to guilt anyone into stacking our chairs for us. We’re just mentioning it as an example of the invisible work of community that isn’t often mentioned. We value this work. We see it in small publishing circles. We see its positive effect in the lives of writers and their books. We see its affect on those who ignore it, or feel above it, acting negatively on everyone trying to make a dent in their vocation, whether it be bookselling, chapbook publishing, writing, zine making or any other indie production. It’s the art sector version of that one family member who just helps do the dishes after dinner (without complaining) and shoots the shit with you as they do it, happily and sweetly. These dumb, essential tasks are wonderful when you have folks like that around. At the end of the night, we stood out front with those two poets, vaping clouds of mint juice onto Richmond Street. They’re good friends of ours now.
Here’s the rub: we are fortunate to be a part of an unofficial and circumstantial community of small businesses who work in the arts. We know cobblers, printmakers, comic book artists, musicians, chapbook publishers, even tarot card builders, and we love a lot of them. They work hard and are often poor as church mice. They stack chairs at night’s end! We think of this whenever someone accuses the small press art world as running on nepotism. How else do you expect it to run, we ask? It’s a community. If you stack a friend’s chairs when you don’t have to, they’ll remember. If you’re nice to someone, then they’ll remember. When you’re down, or in need, they’ll be there for you. How else do you think a fringe, inessential, vocation of passions works? It’s not like there are literary agents hiding in the bushes looking for new talent. Things are built by people, often invisibly, with rhyming and goodwill. How do you think a little lovely book gets made? Tell us the difference between community and culture.
If you’re like us, and you love these little makers of things–leather handbags, small press prints, beautiful chapbooks, indie records–we encourage you to stay after the event and help them clean house. It’s the season for unaccountable acts after all, invisible acts, and those people slogging away in the trenches of beauty love those of you who stick around. 845 Press, Rose Garden Press, Baseline Press, and Antler River Press are four in London worth your time. Please do check them out. Grab a chair and quietly move it to the back. Buy a book from them and give it to a friend this Christmas. It’s what we’re gonna to.
Here’s a bunch of used and beautiful books for you in the meantime.
All the best,
Jason and Vanessa
