Save The Libraries

This is the continuous protest poem to Save The Libraries from ongoing cuts and closures. Please add your own lines by posting in the reply/comments section, and you’ll be added and credited!

Taking inspiration from my Save The Libraries piece which you can view on YouTube 

#savethelibraries Ashington High Arvon Class of 2014 kick us off right now…

 

Our free libraries are the best,

They’re so much better than the rest.

Libraries are mankind’s best friend,

They help us see round the next bend.

Shutting down the library

Limits life’s variety.

 

This is where our history’s stored,

Beautiful arches, birch wood door,

Curving beams and marble floors,

The books inside are mine and yours.

Those who steal our precious books

Are the worst of this nation’s crooks.

 

Libraries should be left to stand,

We need ‘Alice in Wonderland’ .

Whether Dick King Smith or Stephen King,

Libraries make us want to sing!

We want Tolkien, we want Orwell,

To live without them would be pure hell.

Raise our taxes and tax our wifi,

But take our books and we will all cry.

Do not close the library gate

‘Cos our libraries are first rate.

 

Put down your guns and pick up your books

Read about the wiles of Captain Hook.

Sporting athletes, relax your lycra

Run a race with a thousand writers.

Jump and leap across the tracks

Coached by the rhythm of Sylvia Plath.

 

Let’s fight ignorance with a book,

Come inside and take a look.

Without our books where would we be?

Reading sets all our minds free.

To do the basics, to write and read

Is essential to succeed.

Without libraries we’ll be dumb,

With no stories we’ll be glum.

Knowledge is power, as Pope did say.

Join us in the fight today.

Join us in the War of Words,

Our demands must all be heard!(1)

Laugh in a library? Love in a library? You might get funny looks
But live-lit in a library keeps the life-blood in our books (2)

 

(1) Ashington High, Arvon Class of 2014, with Carina Rodney. Collated by Katy Nickols

(2) Polly Moyer

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