This is one of the most beautiful books of poetry I've ever come across. It is a pleasure to look at and to touch. Every poetry book should feel as good as this. We might say the quality of the words is more important than the quality of the print and paper, but they help too.

Especially if you can't see. I can. I do it without thinking all the time I'm awake. So, probably, do you. This is a dual text - English print and braille side by side. I can't read the braille, but as I touch it now, I think of the US presidential election farago and hoo-hah about pregnant pimples and wonder "Aren't we all blind at least some of the time." How many braille books of poetry do you know?

It's the first I've come across. You might be thinking "Poetry Book for the Blind. Full of hoary old chestnuts." Cobblers. This is a selection from the best northwest poetry in the last ten years. Again, how often do blind people have the chance to read contemporary poetry, or do they have to make do with hoary old chestnuts?

There are only thirteen poems, but such a beautiful book at £2.50, it's good value for money. You may not find you like them all. I didn't, but then can you find any anthology where you like them all? Two favourites were Eileen Holroyd's Ms Hughes (click here) and Sophie Hannah's Something You Should Know (click here) Both are different in form but similar in character: Ms Hughes is written in the vernacular of a homophobic little old lady; Something You Should Know is the formal style Betjeman could embrace, if not all its sentiments. All the poems share this particular quality: to question, to get beneath the accepted, and then explain. As Matthew Sweeney puts it in his Introduction:-

Robert Frost defined poetry as a "A fresh look and a fresh listen', and this definition is hard to improve on. He also said 'an idea has to be a little new to be at all true, and if you say a thing three times, it ceases to be so' which is the same thing put a slightly different way. And he's saying is so simple, yet so crucial that it never ceases to shock me to find so much poetry written that makes no attempt to follow Frost's advice. None of that poetry is gathered here.

True.

If I were a librarian, I'd buy this book. In fact I'd buy at least two copies and cut one of them up and mount the poems on the wall somewhere prominent with the print and braille versions side by side. With thirteen in all, there are just enough for one a month - to keep their display as well as the poems fresh. Does your library have braille guides to the lifts, to the catalogues and shelves of books on tape....

It won't happen. I'm not a librarian. Also libraries don't work quite like that. At £2.50 a copy, there should be more than enough money in their book funds to buy a copy for every library in the land. This would make it a runaway poetry best seller. Let me explain: Rhyme & Reason: developing contemporary poetry, published The Arts Council of England on 5th October, last National Poetry Day makes grim reading. For a start at £15 and 156 pages long there isn't a line of poetry in it. The statistics on page 6 mean annual contemporary poetry sales in the UK are around £0.5m - the wages of a below average Premier League soccer player, or a half-decent pop video. Clearly the libraries and the rest of us aren't buying poetry. If you are a librarian, what will you buy - one copy of Rhyme & Reason, or six of A Crocus Selection, or none?

Well, it's getting near Christmas. Why not bulk buy a bunch of Crocii for pressies (around half the books in this country are bought as pressies for Christmas) Shame about the £2.50 price on the back - A Crocus Selection is worth far more than that.

Go to your local bookshop or library with this information:-

A Crocus Selection by Suzanne Batty et al, edited by Matthew Sweeney, published by Crocus Books & The National Library for the Blind ISBN 0-946745-27-7, £.2.50, Spiral bound 80 pages, dual format text and braille

A Crocus Selection can be ordered direct from The National Library for the Blind, Far Cromwell Road, Bredbury, Stockport SK6 2SG. Cheques/postal order for £2.50 should be made payable to The National Library for the Blind

Send reviews and comments to Cathy Bolton, Crocus Books, Cheetwood House, 21 Newton Street, Manchest M1 1FZ tel: 0161 236 2773 e-mail cathy@commonword.org.uk

click here for review of "Like I'm running in a hurdle race"   -  reflections on caring in Sandwell, in the words of carers themselves click here how to foster reader development in care homes click Discussion to hear about Literature and Disabilities

And if you want the details for
Rhyme & Reason: developing contemporary poetry, £15, 156 pages ISBN 0-7287-0810-8 published by The Arts Council of England, 14 Great Peter Street, London SW1P 3NQ tel: 020 7333 0100 minicom 020 7973 6561 fax 0207973 6590 large print or braille contact the Information Department on 020 7973 6453
www.artscouncil.org.uk e-mail enquiries@artscouncil.org.uk

David Fine Lit-Net Co-ordinator