Marketing Poetry

At long last I had pulled together enough money to be able to
achieve my dream; to open a bookshop devoted exclusively to poetry,
which I consider the purest and noblest of the literary arts. For too
long the big booksellers had got away with reluctantly stocking an
obscure shelf or two with poetry books, hiding them away like sickly
retarded children whilst massive, trashy blockbuster novels swaggered
about in the display windows and hogged the bright-stickered prime
racks near to the door and the cashdesks. But in my bookshop there was
a different apartheid; to maintain our distinctiveness, novels, drama
and even short story collections never got through the door. Trouble
was, that was largely the case with customers as well?

"So, how many poetry books did we sell this week?" I asked Dave, my
senior assistant in charge of the weekly stocktake. For reasons which
will rapidly become apparent, I didn't have any junior
assistants.

"Five," he replied. One T.S. Eliot, one Philip Larkin and three of that
collection of poems written for the Royal Family which I suggested you
stocked." At the mere mention of "Royal Rhymes" the bile rose in my
throat whilst my heart sank; I felt like I was coming apart in the
middle.

"Magazines?"

"Well, a couple of moshers came in and bought 'Bloodaxe', but they
brought them back when they found out it was nothing to do with
wargaming; I had to give them a refund."

"Dave, we don't do refunds."

"Yes, but they'd brought their dads, and they looked hard."

"OK, OK. How about posters?" Dave had encouraged me to find niche
markets loosely associated with literature. His face brightened.

"Good news on the poster front, Mark - we sold three of that tennis
girl scratching her arse!"

The upshot was that I'd sold more soft porn posters than decent poetry,
and scant little of either. It was time to take a reality check; my
dream was coming rapidly to an end after only a couple of months.

"Dave, the honest truth is that we're not making enough money to cover
the fuel bills, let alone your wages or the lease. I'll pay you up to
the end of the month, and you can start to look for something else."
The guy was only earning the minimum wage, so he could hardly do worse.
But Dave looked hurt.

"Mark, we've got a good thing going here," he replied. "All we need's
some decent marketing."

"How do you market poetry?" I asked. "Businessman's specials?" I
hazarded. Our modest property was at 284A Wakefield Road, sandwiched
between a kebab shop and a massage parlour, both of which already
offered Businessman's Specials to their varying clientele.

"Bundling," suggested Dave. "You take, say, a Ted Hughes and a Sylvia
Plath, fasten them together with a laggy band and offer a discount if
you buy 'em both! Or buy-one-get-one-free. Loyalty cards, student
discount?"

"I'm sorry, Dave, it'll have to be a closing-down sale - all stock must
go, " I said with finality and slumped against the cash desk.

"Nah," said the ever-optimistic Dave, "look what the big bookshops do -
they have an Event. Catchy window displays, celebrity signing ? tell
you what, I'll sort it out. Let's do it next Saturday!"

That made sense to me - Saturday was the day when the largest number of
people peered in at the dusty windows then passed on.

"Right you are, Dave; last throw of the dice," I promised, though
without much hope.

Dave's marketing was carried out in gleeful secrecy; the only
information of which I was made aware was the booking of local poetess
Veronica Snodgrass to do the book signing; this surprised me somewhat,
as I was unaware that her published work extended beyond some rather
cloying, sentimental pieces printed in the local newspaper's "Thought
For The Day" column when the vicar whose normal slot it was went on
annual holiday. Dave had a rather professional-looking poster made to
this effect and stuck it in one of the front windows. Veronica, a
timid-looking spinster in her late thirties, turned up to verify the
booking with me and spent the rest of the day tittering in a corner
with Dave, who was acting like a comic-book spy, whilst I manned the
unbusy cash desk and tried to lure in passers-by with sheer willpower;
it didn't work, though a few were seen to read the poster and walk
on.

Saturday dawned dull and damp; perfect weather for curling up in front
of the fire with a newly published book of poetry. Or, more likely, to
rent a video. But as I approached the shop at ten to nine I was
astonished to see a queue forming along Wakefield Road; I had never
before seen a queue at any retail establishment in the area, except for
one occasion when the kebab shop had a chip-pan fire and the customers
had to wait outside until it was extinguished. But I then realised that
the queue was outside my own shop and I pushed forward to find the
reason. When I did I almost screamed out loud; a second lurid poster
had now appeared in the other window, and this one bore the legend,
"Free Beer Today" in huge day-glo type, with the proviso, written
underneath in smaller letters, "? with every book of poetry
purchased."

I shoved my way to the front of the queue, unlocked the door and
marched in, to be greeted by a grinning Dave. He had been exercising
some artistic talent; the main display table had been cleared of books
and now bore a cut-out section of a beer barrel strewn with hops and
barley, guarded by sentinels of black bottles.

"Dave, you bloody maniac, " I yelled, "don't you know you need a
licence for selling alcohol?"

Dave's round face still beamed placidly.

"We're not selling any alcohol, Mark, just poetry. Beer we're giving
away. Don't need licences to give stuff away, last I heard. And
besides, that crowd's turned up specially, and I don't think we ought
to disappoint them!"

I could see what he meant; many of the waiting crowd, who were by now
beginning to show signs of restlessness, didn't look like poetry
aficionados. Several of them bore crewcuts or ugly scars, and their
boyfriends looked even worse. The nearest had started to bang on the
windows; it was clearly opening time.
We made our first sale in less than two minutes; a boy of not more than
ten years old came up to the cash desk with a copy of Allen Ginsberg's
"Howl" and an assortment of sticky coins.

"I'll have the Guinness, mister," he said knowledgeably. I hesitated,
then handed him the bottle he was pointing to. He opened it expertly
with his teeth, and left the shop, poetry in one hand and beer in the
other, eagerly devouring both - I wondered which would do him least
harm.

Veronica turned up at ten, and ensconced herself in the corner which
Dave had set up for her with a table and chair, beneath a cardboard
arrow dangling from the ceiling on which was inscribed the word "Poet",
again in day-glo colours. If Veronica's talent was open to question, so
was her interpretation of the word "book", as in the signing thereof;
she had come armed not with books but a huge sheaf of A4 photocopies
stapled together.

"Do you think I could get away with asking for a pound?" she
whispered.

"Make it two quid with a beer included," I replied.

"You're learning," said Dave as he passed me on the way to the cash
desk which I had just vacated in order to introduce Veronica to the
crowd.

At half-past eleven Dave went home in his car to replenish the beer
stock which was beginning to dwindle; so, amazingly, were the volumes
of poetry on the shelves. Most of the thinner books, even the rank bad
stuff which I had feared I would never offload, had gone and it was
largely the more expensive anthologies which still remained unsold.
Even things which weren't included in the beer offer - pens, posters
and fridge magnets - were selling respectably. When Dave returned with
more crates of beer, I grabbed most of the cash in the till and shot
off to pay it into the Saturday-opening bank in the town centre before
our less trustworthy clientele began to realise how much money we were
making.

By three o'clock custom was thinning and we could take a breather, brew
a cuppa and assess our triumphs. I had sold well over half my stock in
one day whilst Veronica, pink-faced with excitement, had had to dash to
the print shop to obtain more copies of her masterpieces. Dave's
business acumen had, I declared, saved his job and even ensured him a
modest pay increase. But then there came the fly in the ointment; I
returned to the cash desk to serve an elderly lady who had just
purchased one of the loathsome volumes of "Royal Rhymes" and I
dutifully handed her the nearest bottle of beer. She stopped to read
the label.

" 'A golden, hoppy pale ale perfect for those thirsty summer evenings.'
That sounds nice," she said.

I looked at the bottle and froze; this one was a clear glass bottle and
was obviously filled not with anything golden or hoppy but with an
opaque black sludge. But the old lady seemed not to notice and left the
shop happily.

"Dave, " I growled, "what exactly's in those bottles?"

Dave looked uncomfortable.

"Well, to tell you the truth I don't exactly know; there were several
batches. I tried to pick out the ones in dark bottles, but in the end
I've had to bring the lot."

I should have known; Dave was a fanatical home-brewer and used to buy
cheap, high-volume beer kits and tinker with them to give them "a bit
of body". His special ingredients had, to my knowledge, included black
treacle, chopped-up malt loaf and liquorice allsorts.

"And you left the labels on, you plonker," I continued. "So what's
going to happen when people get home and open their Guinness and
Newcastle Brown and so on? They might not be happy, to put it
mildly!"

I glanced anxiously through the window, imagining hordes of
dissatisfied customers descending upon the shop, half-empty bottles in
hand, skinhead haircuts bristling angrily, and lawyers representing
Britain's major brewing enterprises striding in their wake.

"Some of it's quite good," said Dave defensively, "tastes just like Old
Peculier".

"And some of it's bloody Young Peculiar, like you," I said unkindly,
all his hard work and entrepreneurial spirit forgotten.

I took a strategic managerial decision for perhaps the first time in my
life; I ushered the few remaining customers out of the shop, tore down
the "Free Beer" poster and reversed the other, wrote "Closed Due To
Expiry Of Lease" hastily with a felt tip pen and stuck it back in the
window. Then we gathered the remaining stock and as much of the
fittings as we could carry, crammed it into our respective cars and
drove off. I dashed back to my mum's, hastily packed a suitcase full of
clothes and told her that I was going to "cool it" in some unspecified
place, which was all that she could tell the press and, later, the
police when they turned up at our front door.

Literary people are, at heart, very kind. Veronica Snodgrass rang round
her writing circle and, in no time at all, I'd been spirited away to a
cottage in North Yorkshire where I still live virtually rent-free. For
the next edition of the local paper bore a picture of me on the front
page with the alliterative caption:
"Poetry Peddler Poisons Pensioner!!"
The full story detailed how Mrs Mavis Wotton had been "taken funny"
whilst reading a poem dedicated to the Queen's Silver Jubilee and had
subsequently been "up all night" with "internal troubles". As she only
ate eggs and Marks and Spencer's ready meals, her son had quickly
tracked down the source of her illness and had taken the beer bottle,
complete with tell-tale yeasty dregs, down to the public health
department.

"Dave, tell me straight, what did you put in that beer?" I asked
later.

"Nothing wrong, I swear! I was trying to make a fruit beer out of a
recipe I'd found."

"Fruit beer?"

"Yeah, the recipe called for fresh figs but I couldn't find any so I
went to the chemist and got some extract."

"What sort of extract?"

"Syrup of figs. It tasted decent, so I used the whole of a big
bottle!"

"Dave, you're my best mate but you really are a prize plonker at
times!"

Despite Mrs Wotton's experience, there was a silver lining to the
cloud; the police, having being called to a free-beer-induced mass
brawl on the council estate, were taken aback to find that a truce had
been declared whilst all the participants squatted liquidly in the
gutter, where some of the leaves of poetry no doubt found an
alternative use. The police then wanted to interview me, but as I
couldn't be found within five minutes and was lower than the two of
clubs in the local deck of hardened criminals, they soon forgot the
whole thing. So did the press; they looked fruitlessly for me at Mum's,
then called round to Veronica's where Dave, dressed only in his
underpants, answered the door in moronic monosyllables whilst Veronica
cowered under the now-mutual bed. But they were not too disappointed:
"Local Poetess Shacks Up With Cretin" would make a decent headline and,
research done, they shot off on masse to the pub.

As for me, I'm still convinced that poetry will sell - if it's marketed
properly! Every few weeks Dave drives up to my hidey-hole in a certain
Yorkshire dale with a few crates and we set up a poetry stall in local
markets, selling poems whilst giving away his beer; I vet the
ingredients and insist it's given away in unmarked bottles and so far
we've not had any trouble. So, if you're travelling in the North
Country, and you run into bumpkins wandering into dry-stone walls
whilst slurring poetry, or vomiting in fields full of daffodils, put
the blame on me!