Between the stacks: London libraries

Question: Where do you go to get some peace in London?

Answer: The Poetry Library

I've only really 'got' poetry in the last few years. I'd always felt it was somehow too hard to understand, deliberately abstract and difficult.

This all changed at a weekend writing workshop, when I shared my reservations with a genuine, real-life poet. He pursed his lips and told me to come along for the tutors' reading that night.

In a cavernous Tudor hall, he read some of his poems, holding our gaze after each one, letting his last line hang in the air for a moment or two. I'm going to teach you lot a thing or two, he seemed to be thinking as he turned the pages slowly. His poems were about ordinary things. One about a woman feeding apples to her dying husband woke me up, made me alert to the power of a clear image, sparingly conveyed.

Afterwards, he cornered me. 'Was that difficult to understand?' he demanded.

And I had to admit that it wasn't. His poems were like stories. Clear, vivid, engaging.

The fact that he spoke beautifully, and we were sitting in a candlelit hall, and I hadn't been read to since Mrs Storey swept through the fabulous Hating Alison Ashley in Year Four definitely helped, but it was more than that. I was a convert.

After that, I felt far more curious about poetry. I've met a few more genuine, real life poets since then, and they make a living teaching, writing, publishing and giving workshops and talks just like other artists. They also watch cricket, get drunk, read food magazines and crack jokes just like the rest of us.

Anyway, to get back on topic, the Poetry Library is the place to go in London if you need a bit of spirit-lifting. The people that work there are lovely. The phone doesn't ring, it tinkles. You'll get a little tour, and you can join up and borrow five books at a time. The librarians – many poets themselves – even show you how to work the stacks, which roll open with big wheels.

And they'll warn you gently to check no one is standing between them before you start rolling.
Although quite frankly, these days the thought of being flattened by poetry is nowhere near as scary or foreign to me as it once was.