Sally Evans
 

photo courtesy of Malcolm Handoll of Five Senses http://www.allfivesenses.com. Malcolm writes on walking in the countryside, including barefoot walking, and navigating without the help of instruments by what you can tell around you. See his web site above. The place is a favourite, Wade's Bridge in the Sma Glen.

Click here for An interview with Sally by Ryan Van Winkle, May 2010. Mostly about Poetry Scotland. Speaking of which, Callander Poetry Weekend will be coming up again shortly, 3rd to 5th September. It has a page of its own on this site where the programme will be detailed.


we've got something for you
Hear me sing!


A new direction for desktopsallye
I am now beginning to sell books by internet from desktopsallye, and I find this almost as startling - though not quite - as when we first sold books at street markets, working towards our bookshop, some twenty five years ago.

Here's a beautiful Bede in Latin : Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum ad fidem codicum manuscriptorum recensuit Josephus Stevenson. Londinii Sumptibus Societatis 1838 in a beautiful maroon morocco half binding .  £100.

OK that's not cheap, and within this site, as in our real bookshop I realise we must have cheaper and expensive books side by side. I'm going at it gently - when I sell one book I'll replace it with two, and add other books as they seem appropriate. You can be sure of excellent condition and exact descriptions of any books I offer for sale.

Bookselling has moved steadily in the direction of internet sales, to the point where however effective our real-world bookshop is (and it is shaping up as the best one in Scotland for books in good condition and bindings) it is worth our having some presence on the internet, if only to persuade you to come to Callander, Scotland and visit our lovely shop.

With my training in library cataloguing, bookselling experience and my experience of using the internet social network, I am setting off on this adventure completely independently. Book collectors and specialists in all our subjects which include Scottish, poetry, literature, philosophy, history, Latin, Greek, natural history and gardening and that wonderful category RANDOM, will we hope be looking in to desktopsallye for our offers of quality books.

All friends will be able to use the site exactly as before, for its poems and news, bees and gardens, its personal element and some additional pages accessible from the Poetry Scotland website. In fact I'll probably be updating it more often. Just skip over any booklists you stumble on, or read them for fun, because I am going to write them with entertainment in mind, as well as accuracy.

I have added a Visitors Book and I would be very glad to see old and new users sign there.


SallyE June 2010



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Light pillar           
photo Pat Morrissey

Swirled colour
no prentice pillar
in cool interior

plain smooth stone
the artist sun
and new stained glass

congregation absent
cushioned chairs
mind their history

oaken furniture
Knox's pulpit
ecclesiastical

decoration
poverty riches
dearth of images

among these colours
someone prepares
flowers on a table

we walk round
the familiar
unfamiliar

(Dunfermline Abbey)
(Durham Cathedral)
Stirling parish church

all their trammels
of power and art
stone more than words

changeable windows,
glass and sunlight,
slabs and weather


illuminated
in an instant
around a curve.


Sally Evans


Bee video clips

the start of a new collection of fascinating bee data


The decade's turn was marked by prolonged white-out, see Lake of Menteith above, and see the Curling episode on *start here blog.*  Other things that happened a long time ago, in 2009, see below

*Viewing Tower, Flanders Moss: two great pictures to start the new diehard poetry news page

*Welsh, Gaelic and poetry in Snowdonia: SNAP to the Guardian (I blogged this 30 Nov, they blogged same pic with a poetry item 1 Dec.) see start here blog.

 

*Rachel and Star in Poland on this week page

*Gatehouse of Fleet & poem for Adrian Mitchell 
*
Liverpool trip: this week page   *Deer ticks: garden page

 

*Bho Leabhar Latha Maria Malibran

*Callander Poetry Weekend 09 Gallery and account left menu

*Which science fiction writer made Loch Katrine disappear?
    *start here* blog


Poetry Scotland now at Issue   62      Link to Colin Will's  PS Website

Blaeberries

Let's go pick blaeberries,
strong, dark, sweet blaeberries

that lie in lairs
as though they know
the country's dangerous.

They hide dark wine-blue hue
among mild red-green leaves
on slopes that stalk the sun.

Let's stay an hour or so,
pretend we live like this
always, provisioning

this fruit we breakfast on,
freeze down, consume as pies,
juice thickened by heat,

sweetened with honey. High
on high braes in July,
blaeberries, earthy.

Let's go pick blaeberries
Let's go seek, let's go early.


Let's go pick blaeberries
Beth Junor took this pic of our favourite Trossachs dining room and stopping off point. Ben A'an behind. Has to be a favourite pic. It's not even so much the photography as the place feeling like part of our living space. The Blaeberries poem appeared in The Great North Road.

Callander Poetry Weekend 2009  -- now with its own page see left menu.

 

Itinerant Poetry Librarian.
Continuously since May 2006 The Itinerant Poetry Librarian has been travelling the world with a free public library, installing the library & librarian and archiving the sounds, poems and poetry of the cities, peoples and countries she meets.

We’ve now clocked up over 1000 hours of public library service, in 11 countries & 21 cities worldwide, in over 150 different locations.

We’re here to ...

    * Remind people of the importance of free public libraries
    * Subvert mainstream channels of distribution
    * Remind people that access to knowledge should be free and not dependent upon economic wealth hierarchies
    * Show people that poetry/art can provide answers to questions we ask of life
    * Experiment in existing outside of 'the market' – thereby, instead, investing in social capital, social innovation and community.

Incidental FAQs...

    * Yes we carry our entire life and the library with us as we go
    * Yes, it is quite heavy
    * No, we're not mad. As the former US Poet Laureate, Charles Simic, once said, 'But what if poets are not crazy?' That's the spirit boyo!
    * In the US we operated our entire life and library on a budget of 4 US dollars per day
    * In East Germany in 2009 we achieved our personal budgetary best record: operating life & library on a budget of one euro per day
    * We operate under official regulations, guidance policies and with core purposes, designated as the movement GYMENDECOLOGY, and also known within peripheral circles as The Zen of the Library.
    * Our Library ByeByeLaws are based on Norfolk County Council's Public Libraries ByeLaws, in turn regulated under the original UK 1964 Libraries & Museums Act. Have we adapted them for our own purposes? Yes we have. Do we mean funny business? Yes we do.

Poetry Site Links (1)  Byron's Bedroom


                          (2)  Virtual Tour of Shakespeare & Co

                          (3)  Hill Ornithological Collection

                          (4)   Recording of Yeats reading The Lake Isle of Innisfree

 

Broken Holmes and After 
 see my blog  

Ancient woodlands and trees

This Week page comes back to life with Doune Castle pictures

Portrait gallery: Women Makars of Scotland: Please scroll down


  Mid May:
      New book arrives: The Honey Seller
   See the new book page left:
an experiment with Search Inside

          (to get one contact Sally see foot of page)

 

First of May:  It was a good ball while we kicked it:  Sally blogs about facebook

April

Day in Edinburgh: more on the SPL event

Poem-a-day see left menu

Real bees arrive

Bees settle

Elephant painting: video on The Bees the Book page


New! March:
Draft of a poem, with help  Poets fill space

Glasgow

Clock Tower and Eucryphia, Cambo house

Paul and Sandi pay a special visit to Callander: see blog page

New! January:  Aconites  Inversnaid

New! February: This page: 25 Things. Laureates.

Click for:  Sestinas  Gaarrye   Jokey Speech  Cambo   Steampunk
Goosanders

Kilmartin

New Topics Blog attached to site: (enables blog feeds to facebook.)
Women Makars and Laureates

-------Above, L-R Sheena Blackhall, Magi Gibson. Centre, Margaret Gillies Brown, all of whom by chance plan to be at Callander Poetry Weekend this year...

Hi Sally - couldnt resist a peek at Byron's bedroom, which inspired the following:

Fallen Lucifers

We love our fallen Lucifers..
Lord Byron, Errol Flynn
With their fires forever burning
And their morals in the bin

They're so like an Xmas pudding
With the sixpences stuffed in
They're rich and mad and bad for us,
There's nought so sweet as sin!

                             Sheena Blackhall , Boxing Day

Watch Nora the pussycat play the piano and these clever idiots jumping about on the floor piano


NEW:  "The apostrophe is disappearing and will disappear altogether by the end of the century," said Dr Treharne. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1055772.stm


desktopsallye is still entirely semi-colon free.You will also notice an absence of apostrophes in well known elided words, in cases where there is no ambiguity. I never had an its/it's problem, but if you still use its/it's, here is why youre a duffer if you cant do it:
a) his hers its. b) it's = it is every time, except when it's = it has.


Contact me: If you like it, hate it, want to make comments or suggestions, get hold of my books, enquire about the bookshop or just say hello, you can contact me as follows:

email: sally dot king4 at btinternet dot com

phone UK [0]1877 339449

sallyevanz on facebook, Twitter and Skype

Kings Bookshop, 91-93 Main Street, Callander Scotland FK17  8BQ

Blog comment facility on *start here* blog, left menu.