Because of the Labor Day holiday, this is our last issue until Tuesday, September 3. Enjoy the long weekend!

Sinclair Inlet Book Co., featuring new and used titles, opened in July at 821 Bay St., Port Orchard, Wash. Kitsap Daily News reported that owner Terry Heath, who launched Bookshop Under the Stairs in Town Square Mall in 2022, had been "looking for a way out from the cupboard under the stairs."

"I really wanted to find a spot, and when this opened up, I figured I'd better grab it," he said, adding that Bookshop Under the Stairs is expected to remain open until March 2025, when his lease of the mall space expires.

Heath noted that he and the mall had not always been on the best of terms, a situation that escalated with mall ownership's decision not to allow a previously planned Drag Queen Story Time session last year for what it called safety concerns. "It became sort of a longstanding, 'Yeah, I'm not going to be staying here,' " he said. "It's just a variety of things, but I don't want to bad-mouth the mall. Obviously, the retail economy isn't great right now either."

While sales numbers had steadily increased at the mall store, they did not hit the level Heath needed to maintain his current space, prompting the search for a smaller spot with a lower overhead. "The pie is only so big, and you can slice it so many ways, so it's more sustainable to have the lower overhead," he noted.

Port Orchard now has three indie bookshops downtown: Sinclair Inlet Book Co. joins Salmonberry Books, and Find the Path Books. 

"The more the merrier," said Karena Fagan, co-owner of Find the Path Books. "I hope we can bring different styles of books for different kinds of people. We were kind of hoping that at one point, we could get together and do some kind of thing between the three stores. Like a book crawl sort of idea."

In a move first reported by Bloomberg News earlier this week, Apple has laid off approximately 100 employees in its digital services group, with the Apple Books and Apple Bookstore team most affected.

While Apple Books may not be a major priority going forward, Bloomberg expects the app to still receive updates and new features. Outlets like Reuters and the Verge have noted that the layoffs come as Apple faces declining sales in China and in the wake of a much larger round of layoffs in the spring.

Employees in engineering roles and in the Apple News team were also hit by the recent cuts.

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance board of directors has released the slate for the 2024 board elections. Two seats are coming open, currently held by Janet Geddis of Avid Bookshop, Athens, Ga., who is completing her second term; and Julia Davis of the Book Worm Bookstore, Powder Springs, Ga., who is seeking re-election.

In addition, the board will be expanded by two seats to increase member representation, as set out in SIBA's newly revised bylaws, approved in the spring. This year's slate includes:

Julia Davis, the Book Worm Bookstore, Powder Springs, Ga.
Rayna Nielsen, Blue Cypress Books, New Orleans, La.
Cristina Nosti, Books & Books, Coral Gables, Fla.
Lucile Perkins-Wagel, Blinking Owl Books, Fort Myers, Fla.
Melissa Taylor, E. Shaver, Bookseller, Savannah, Ga.
Nicole Yasinsky, Novel., Memphis, Tenn. 

Bookshop.org U.K. has launched Bookloop, a buy-back initiative for used books that allows customers to trade books they own for credit on the website, the Guardian reported. Readers can register books through the online valuation system and then either take them to a parcel delivery drop-off or have them picked up from home.

The used books will not be sold on Bookshop.org, but traded on other online marketplaces by Zeercle, a company that also operates the WH Smith buy-back program launched late last year. Books traded via Bookshop.org will not be sold on Amazon-owned websites.

Accumulated royalties will be distributed to authors via a shared author fund through an arrangement with the Society of Authors and the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society, the Guardian noted. The Drusilla Harvey Access Fund offers grants to authors to cover a variety of support needs, from travel costs to childcare.

Mark Thornton, senior partnerships manager for Bookshop.org U.K., said that he sees the program as sitting within the site's "overarching positive loop, positive cycle of economic activity. We're always saying the best way to support bookshops is in person. But on the other side of that, the inexorable rise of online book purchases means we have to find new ways of looping all of these things together, so that we're all in this shared endeavor of supporting a really positive reading culture, with independent bookshops at its heart."

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Kotsyubynsky, a bookstore/café located in the Carpathian village of Verkhnii Yaseniv in western Ukraine, opened earlier this month during the 2024 Writers' Bonfire on the Cheremosh literary festival. Chytomo reported that co-owners Anna Pavlichenko and her husband, Vasyl Tomyshynets, chose the name because the village offered so much inspiration for Ukrainian classical writer Mykhailo Kotsyubynsky. 
 
"I wanted to create a space for recovery from the war for soldiers and their families," said Pavlichenko, an author who believes in the therapeutic power of writing, and has supported fellow soldiers in publishing books. 

The initial idea was to create a recovery space, but finding the right location was challenging. Pavlichenko won a government grant for starting a business, and decided with her husband to build the bookstore on the plot of land they had purchased.

Featuring a reading room, terrace, and access to the Black Cheremosh river, the new shop offers books, coffee, drinks, and desserts. Future plans call for organizing cultural retreats for veterans, soldiers, and their families, introducing them to courses on creativity and presenting their works. 
 
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Bookshop wedding proposal: Canadian bookstore the Book Wardrobe in Mississauga, Ont., shared pics from a happy moment: "She said YES! And the bookshop was the witness. Congratulations, Sandy and Aram! Thank you for allowing us to share your special moment. We were able to capture stolen shots while hiding at the balcony! Special thanks to Angela and Emilia for the prep." --Robert Gray

Applications are open for the sixth annual Carla Gray Memorial Scholarship for Emerging Bookseller-Activists, which was created in honor of the executive marketing director at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt who passed away suddenly in May 2017. Applications will be accepted through September 20. New eligibility requirements and the application can be found here. 

The winning bookseller will be awarded a year-long scholarship for professional development, which includes travel and hotel to attend Winter Institute 2025; travel and hotel to attend their 2025 regional fall trade show; and a $1,000 stipend to fund a community outreach project. The goal of the community outreach project is to find new readers and ensure access to books that improve readers' lives while integrating bookstores even more fully into their communities.

Presented by the Friends of Carla Gray Committee and the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc), the scholarship is intended to help a bookseller with at least one but fewer than 10 years of experience connect with other booksellers, publishers, and authors, and establish the long-term relationships needed to keep the book industry thriving.

"We've been so inspired by the recipients of the Carla Gray Fellowship over the past years, each of whom have brought great energy and new ideas to the book community," said the members of the Friends of Carla Gray Committee. "We can't wait to see what this year's applicants have planned!"

Binc executive director Pam French said: "The Binc Foundation is honored to support emerging booksellers through this scholarship and professional development opportunity that celebrates Carla's legacy and her enthusiasm for books, bookstores and their communities. We look forward to meeting the winner in person at Winter Institute in 2025 and hearing more about their outreach project."

Shelf Awareness for Readers, our weekly consumer-facing publication featuring adult and children's book reviews, author interviews, backlist recommendations, and fun news items, is being published today. Starred review highlights include Bill Schutt's Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth, from Hagfish to Humans, which is a "treasure trove of... facts" about the eating habits of vampire bats and which frogs have teeth; Navid Sinaki's debut novel, Medusa of the Roses, a "spellbinding story [that] unfolds not as a myth retold but as a fresh legend; and Everything We Never Had by Randy Ribay, which delivers a "profound multigenerational" saga of Filipino American men. In The Writer's Life, novelist Caro De Robertis, author of The Palace of Eros, a genderqueer retelling of the Greek myth of Psyche and Eros, shares the story of discovering a kindred spirit in Jo March. Plus, rediscover the late poet, author and editor Hettie Jones, who made her "household a hub for Beat writers and other artists."

Today's issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers is going to 635,000 customers of more than 250 independent bookstores. Stores interested in learning more can contact our partnership program team via e-mail. To see today's issue, click here.

Indigo Bridge bookstore, Lincoln, Neb., which announced its impending closure earlier this month, encouraged customers to share their favorite bookstore memories on postcards. 

"Thank you all for such a beautiful farewell," Indigo Bridge posted on Facebook. "We were overwhelmed by the kindness, positivity, and support our community brought to our store this past weekend. We shared laughs, hugs, tears, and goodbyes with so many wonderful people. We cannot thank you all enough for the way you have supported us.

"We want to share additional gratitude for those who wrote down their favorite Indigo Bridge memories for us, those who signed our plant pots, and to @saoie__ for drawing these amazing renditions of our team."

Fred & June's Books, Mooresville, N.C., shared a pic on Facebook of the shop's sidewalk chalkboard and its bookish fortune-telling message: "We see a book in your future."

"May your bike baskets be full of skateboards and books today, readers," the Book & Cover, Chattanooga, Tenn., posted on Instagram. 

Colleen Kurzbach is joining the Hachette Book Group sales team as director of title management, effective September 3. She has 28 years of sales experience in the book world, including the last 10 years as senior director of title management for the Knopf and Penguin Publishing Groups at Penguin Random House.

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Mikey LaFave has been promoted to operations manager at Avid Bookshop, Athens, Ga. The store noted, "Mikey began bookselling in 2022 and is known among friends for never failing to sneak a book into the most random of situations, including hiking the gorge floor at Tallulah, seeing their favorite bands at any number of venues, and the 20 minutes of movie previews at the movie theater. They enjoy essays, poetry, horror, literary fiction, and anything that can be called spooky, weird, strange and unusual. Plus, they love perusing and recommending from Avid's children's book and young adult book selections. You can catch them around town reading in bars and other non-conventional spaces (but please don't startle them!), going on hikes, or watching spooky and/or strange (and mostly horror) movies."

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Erin Powell has joined Macmillan as sales assistant, field sales.

On a recent edition of 1A, which is produced by WAMU and distributed by NPR, host Jenn White explored "the past, present, & future of our favorite bookstores" with guests Evan Friss, author of The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore; Hannah Oliver Depp, founder and co-owner Loyalty bookstores in Washington, D.C., and Silver Spring, Md.; and Paul Colarusso, communications director at the Strand in New York City.

A Pale View of Hills, the film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel that is currently in production, will be distributed by GAGA Corporation and produced by Japan's Bunbuku and the U.K.'s Number 9 Films, Deadline reported. Set to be released in Japan in summer 2025, the project stars Suzu Hirose (Our Little Sister, The Third Murder). It is exec-produced by Ishiguro and directed by Kei Ishikawa (Gukoroku: Traces of Sin, A Man). U-Next's Hiroyuki Ishiguro will lead the producing team.

"I'm a great admirer of Ishikawa-san's previous movie, A Man, and I've been very excited from the first day he expressed his wish to adapt my novel, A Pale View of Hills," Kazuo Ishiguro said. "He has a masterly command over the language of cinema and draws superbly nuanced performances from his actors. His fine screenplay, which I've read with fascination, is mysterious and moving."

Ishikawa added: "I still cannot believe that we are making a film based on this special story by our own hands. What gave me the courage to face this great novel was the words of the author Kazuo-san, who said, 'I always believed that this story should be made into a film by the younger generation in Japan.' "

Hiroyuki Ishiguro commented: "Ever since I discovered this novel in London, it has been my dream to adapt it into a feature film as a Japanese-British co-production. During the development of this project, we experienced the pandemic, and now conflicts persist in different places of the world. As we face rapid changes in this world where lifestyles and values are constantly shifting, and the future remains uncertain, I find great significance in bringing this deeply personal story to follow one woman's memory, set in 1950s Japan and 1980s England--two eras that also underwent paradigm shifts--to a global audience as a narrative with universal themes related to the present."

Winners have been announced for the 2024 Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Awards, which are awarded every two years and honor "the best books written by Indiana authors." Each winner receives $5,000 and the opportunity to make a $500 donation to an Indiana library of their choice. The winners:

Fiction: The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
Poetry: To Sleep in the Horse's Belly: My Greek Poets and the Aegean Inside Me by George Kalamaras
Nonfiction: Vanished Indianapolis by Edward Fujawa
Debut: Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways by Brittany Means
Genre: Don't Forget the Girl by Rebecca McKanna
Children's: Here We Come! by Janna Matthies
Middle Grade: Unfadeable by Maurice Broaddus
Young Adult: The Minus-One Club by Kekla Magoon
Drama: Predictor by Jennifer Blackmer

photo: Alma Lopez

Minrose Gwin is the author of the novels The Queen of Palmyra, a finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award; Promise, which was shortlisted for the Willie Morris Award in Southern Literature; and The Accidentals, which received the 2020 Mississippi Institute for Arts and Letters Award in Fiction. Gwin began her writing career as a journalist and later taught at universities across the country, most recently the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was Kenan Eminent Professor of English. Her fourth novel, Beautiful Dreamers (Hub City Press, August 27, 2024), is a story of a precocious teen and her mother, their gay best friend, and the con man who unravels their family.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Young Memory, her mother, Virginia, and her mother's gay friend, Mac, make a life together in 1950s Mississippi--until a beautiful, charismatic predator shows up.

On your nightstand now:

The Waters by Bonnie Jo Campbell: I just finished this one, and I don't know when a book has given me such a strong sense of place. The squish of a bog, the snakes, and even the characters themselves are so much part of the natural environment.

The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel: I'm about halfway through this stunning novel, which puts a grieving mother--a paleobiologist--and her two daughters in search of a way to re-create the extinct woolly mammoth and therefore to help save the planet.

Favorite book when you were a child:

A series beginning with Uncle Wiggily's Adventures by Howard R. Garis. Uncle Wiggily is an old gentleman rabbit who suffers from "rheumatism" and gets into (and out of) scrape after scrape with characters like the "skillery-scalery alligator." These were children's books with an inch-tall spine--no pictures. My grandfather read them to me every night, and then one day I was reading them to him. They taught me about plot and conflict.

Your top five authors:

I'm a literary critic turned novelist, so this is a hard question for me. I'll limit it to the 20th and 21st centuries.

William Faulkner: "The human heart in conflict with itself."
Virginia Woolf: The lyricism of daily life.
Toni Morrison: Black life, told in brilliant prose from the inside out.
James Baldwin: Brilliant insights into racism in America.

Number five is too hard: I can think of dozens.

Book you've faked reading:

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce: I wasn't overly fond of Joyce's masterwork Ulysses, which I read in three graduate classes and liked less and less. Finnegans Wake is even more show-offy and, in my opinion, just plain crazy.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. This is a beautiful gem of a novel. It's the story of a humble distributor of coal in a small town in Ireland deciding whether to confront the combined power of the Catholic Church and his community, including his wife, when he discovers the nuns' cruel treatment of young women and girls--pregnant out of wedlock--in one of the Church's now-infamous Magdalene Laundries. What will he do to save one girl?

Just one more, please: Life After Life by Jill McCorkle. You can't beat McCorkle for nuanced conflict in domestic life. She is such a wonderfully suggestive writer. This one is about an older couple and the depth and breadth of their complicated lives.

Book you've bought for the cover:

The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel. The cover is a forlorn-looking baby woolly mammoth. I'm in love with mammoths. I spotted the book in the window of my local bookstore, did a U-turn, and went right in and bought it. For my new novel, Beautiful Dreamers, I did a deep dive into the history of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, back to the Paleo-Indian Age when the land mass stretched all the way to Mexico and animals like mastodons, saber-toothed tigers, and camels (!) roamed the land.

Book you hid from your parents:

Peyton Place by Grace Metalious, for obvious reasons.

Book that changed your life:

I'd have to choose Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. When I first read this novel, I was struggling with my memoir, Wishing for Snow, about the loss of my mother to mental illness and then death, and my desperate (and fruitless) attempts to "save" her. This is a novel about floating through a grief and loss that seem to have no end. A mother commits suicide, leaving her two young daughters with their aunt, Sylvie, who's a drifter. It touched me in a deep place, not just because of what I was going through with my own writing but because it was poetry as much as prose. But this tells you nothing. Read it.

Favorite line from a book:

"124 was spiteful." The first sentence of Toni Morrison's Beloved is enigmatic and intriguing. As a young journalist, I was told never to begin a sentence with a number, so this first line stopped me short. Plus it took me a while to realize that 124 was a house, and then I had to wonder how a house could be spiteful. This book taught me so much, but this first line taught me you can break all the rules.

Five books you'll never part with:

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, for all the reasons above.

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. A stunning masterpiece. I could read it from now until doomsday and draw something new each time.

Beloved by Toni Morrison. Like Absalom, this is a magnificent novel about slavery and its tragic half-lives. Unlike Faulkner's novel, it takes us inside the wrenching experience of slavery inasmuch as that's possible.

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. What does one person's existence on this earth come to in the end? This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel traces the trajectory of one woman's outwardly simple, inwardly complex life.

The Collected Works of William Shakespeare (in case I'm ever stranded on a desert island).

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. For that sense of total confusion, shared by the central character, Quentin Compson. I tell students to please not read the CliffsNotes. It's that fog of confusion you need to follow--one that leads not so much to clarity but to the "Truth" of the story, which is that there is no Truth with a capital T, only stories.

Your favorite novel in translation:

The Wall by Marlen Haushofer. I'm not a fan of science fiction, but this novel set me on such firm footing that I couldn't resist it. A woman in the European countryside is cut off from the rest of world by a wall of glass, perhaps created by a nuclear blast. She has a cow and a cat, and her own fragile life. Can she survive? But it's really about how one woman's connection to the natural world contrasts with the terrible destructiveness of humankind.

In the heartwarming, uplifting fantasy adventure novel The Teller of Small Fortunes, Julie Leong's debut, a small-time fortune teller hiding from the highest echelons of power finds herself at the nucleus of a close-knit band of friends.

Tao travels from town to town with only the mule that pulls her wagon for company, selling her services telling fortunes. "I tell small fortunes only," she warns her customers. "No war, no politics, no harvests or famines; those are strictly for Seers with the greater vision, and I don't deal in such things." She leads a solitary existence, but putting down roots isn't possible. Tao came to the kingdom of Eshtera as a little girl but has the physical characteristics of someone from her birthplace, the kingdom of Shinara. Villagers often show her their xenophobic tendencies, and the truth of her fortunes unsettles people over time. She also worries that the Guild of Mages could be right at her heels, ready to drag her back to the city of Margrave.

A fallen tree blocking the road changes her life when two men happen upon her trying to chop through it to make way for her wagon. Her suspicions about the pair aren't exactly allayed by the assertion that "we're not highwaymen... we're thieves!" She soon learns one of the men is a reforming thief; his friend, a former mercenary, is on the road searching for his lost little girl. They decide to join Tao on her journey to the next town, where their party is joined by Kina, a baker's apprentice who sells "sweet buns, handpies, [and] tarts, er, of the edible variety." The group's adventures on the open road bring them closer together, and soon Tao is surrounded by a circle of support she never could have imagined. As her past dogs her heels, Tao must decide how far she'll go to protect herself and to help her friends.

Leong is unafraid to head into deeply emotional territory in this sweet, earnest story of found family and finding one's truth. She strikes a lovely balance between high stakes, humor, and touching moments. Each character's growth feels logical and earned. Readers of Travis Baldree or T.J. Klune will enjoy following wherever Leong leads, and they can be sure she will only take them down dark paths to show them the light waiting at the end of the trail. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Shelf Talker: A fortune teller on the run surprises herself by finding friendship in this sweet, heartwarming fantasy adventure.

What does poetry mean to you and why is it important?
It's the art form that gets closest to my inner brain. It bypasses the filters, the logic and cynicism, and gets really close to the part that does the fighting and flighting. It's my deep-tissue brain massage.

--Poet Bill Nelson, in a q&a with Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day

A "countrywide poetry event extravaganza," National Poetry Day is governed by the New Zealand Book Awards Trust Te Ohu Tiaki i Te Rau Hiringa and supported by Phantom Billstickers. This year's edition was held August 23, featuring "poetry everywhere... on buses, written on pavements, displayed on projected screens, and even emerging from typewriters. This vibrant annual celebration of words and creativity offers something for everyone."

"National Poetry Day is a celebration that reminds us of the power of words to bridge gaps and touch hearts. In a world often divided by uncertainty, poetry stands as a beacon of unity and hope," said Phantom Billstickers CEO Robin McDonnell. "As we unveil this year's exciting lineup, let's come together to experience the joy, reflection, and connection that poetry offers. In these times of change, let poetry be our constant--a force for good that unites us as a community."

Richard Pamatatau, poet and spokesperson for the New Zealand Book Awards Trust Te Ohu Tiaki i Te Rau Hiringa, added: "You don't have to be a literary scholar to write or recite a poem. On Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day, we are all invited to share our joys, fears, and challenges by expressing what often comes to mind, and to share our emotions in a way that resonates with everyone."

Since confessing in 2014 that I was woefully ignorant of New Zealand poetry, I've tried to celebrate NZ Poetry Day annually by reading a New Zealand poet I've not encountered before. This year that poet is Bill Nelson, whose latest book, Root Leaf Flower Fruit, is a brilliant "verse novel" that was a finalist for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. The book begins with words that were also featured on his Phantom Billstickers street poster:

Still the taste of mud. Clay, soil, half-decayed
leaves, pine needles, earth. Gritty, metallic,
even after washing my mouth, soda water,
toothpaste. Foaming, frothing. I can still taste it.
Everywhere. Rammed into the mouth and ears,
nostrils, hair, beneath the fingernails,
caulking the throat. Like the trees, the roots,
the mud. Sending a message.
Designed to look like an accident.
But no memory of what happened.
I might as well be someone else.
No message.
Then again, there was foreboding –
the afternoon before, a storm rolling in,
Latika on the phone. I’ll be home late.
It sounds horrible out there, she says, her concern
reinforced by the rain and darkness
already wetting the windows.

Another NZ Poetry Day habit I've developed is keeping an eye on indie bookseller social media posts marking the occasion. Here's a sampling:

Scorpio Books, Christchurch: "Happy National Poetry Day! Our NZ Poetry department is absolutely brimming with treasures at the moment--dive in next time you visit, or browse online."

Hedley's Books, Masterton: "We're celebrating @nzpoetryday this Friday 23rd August with the launch of a new local poetry competition, in honor of Jan Gerritsen's incredible contribution to literature and writing in the Wairarapa."

At Books & Co.

Books & Co., Otaki: "We are all set for National Poetry Day tomorrow! And we are offering 20% off any poetry book you buy in store!"

Schrödinger's Books, Petone: "We celebrated early last night with some amazing readings from Jake Arthur, romesh dissanayake and Evan Thomas! Thank you so much to everybody who came along--we hope you had as much fun as we did!"

Marsden Books, Wellington: "It's National Poetry Day! 'If you cannot be the poet, be the poem.'--David Carradine. Come and get your poetry fix here!"

Time Out Bookstore, Auckland: "Thank you so much to all of our wonderful poets who read last night, for the tenth anniversary of All Tomorrow's Poets! It was a really special and warm-hearted evening."

The Dorothy Butler Children's Bookshop, Auckland: "Here's a poem for you by Paula Green from her amazing Roar Squeak Purr: A New Zealand Treasury of Animal Poems, illustrated by Jenny Cooper. I'm inspired to try one myself. How about you?" 

Poetree at the Women's Bookshop

The Women's Bookshop, Auckland: "We've put out our Poet-Tree, with poems by Isla Huia, Mohamed Hassan, Anne Kennedy, Sarah Broom and many more. We're also taking 10% off all Aotearoa NZ poetry books for today only if you're ordering online use the promo code POET. And if you need MORE poetry (and who doesn't?) our friends at the Open Book... are running a Black Out Poetry event all weekend. Have a happy and poetic day!"

The Open Book, Auckland: "And with that, we wrap up this year’s #nzpoetryday festivities! Thanks to all who came and frequented our blackout poetry station between Friday and now, we have loved having you create in our space and papering the hallway with your creations. Thanks also to Phantom Billstickers @nzpoetryday for helping the power of poetry to be unleashed on poetry communities across Aotearoa every year! We are already looking forward to the next one!"

Why does Phantom Billstickers NZ Poetry Day matter? Well, this was Bill Nelson's answer: "Because poetry is language at its most exciting and uninhibited and bonkers and poetry day is great way to get poetry like that in the faces of more people."