The Little Poet Book Store
17.02.2024 Teagan Kruse
The Little Poet Bookstore began as I sat on the cold concrete floor of my tiny, dark, not-yet-book-corner at 3am. There I was trying to figure out how people would normally get planks of very large wood attached to some type of gigantic blue plastic, that is apparently a wall. As I paint the ceiling to the floor at least eight times over, mixing black paint with terps, I wonder why the paint keeps disintegrating. I then build two walls of shelves with zero carpentry skills and zero money to hire someone who may know things about drills and their reverse functions, or the fact that terps strip paint off walls.
I dust off my hands as the sun rises, content that I’ve finished the job to pure perfection. I look down at my empty bucket of paint and remnants of a drill, then back up at a now immensely flammable painted but unpainted interior and laugh. Thinking to myself ‘I’ve seriously got no idea what the fuck I’m doing, hey?’. This sentiment was the foundation that my little concrete corner was built on.
Once friends started to feel sorry for me and congregated to help finish the build, she looked a dream. Black matte walls, boarded-up windows, and deep, dark, red lighting. I had two walls of derelict shelves to fill, and since I had already collected every good book from Ballina to Billinudgel (ranging from brilliant to exceptional only), it was time to jump into that old red Corolla. The one you've probably seen broken down at the Mullum turnoff at least twice this week. I headed south towards Melbourne with about two dollars worth of fuel in the tank.
On the way I ventured down every dirt road, and toward every old town. I stopped at each second-hand bookstore, op shop, book fair, and hit up Gumtree, hard! Shamelessly I dug through people’s houses and hovels, hand-selecting every book based only on my own sadistic taste, knowledge of wacky-dosed-up writers, and various quirky literature. Calling on dying old men in mansions, deceased professors, abandoned buildings and shacks, and every lonely hoarder existing along the Southeast Coast.
I piled about one thousand dusty old books, three lamps, one chandelier, a library ladder, and a rug into the back of that car and into the shop. For weeks I would sleep curled up on the seat underneath my palace of precious goods. As I lay at night beneath my now forever tomb of books and lampshades, I had at this point no idea of the potential this pile of delightful crap held. All I knew was that my heart was light, funds were low, and this wasn't even the beginning of all The Little Poet Bookstore would come to be.
The music began very accidentally, starting with a few solo artists tucked in amongst the books. As word got out, my tiny corner suddenly turned into an entire music venue ranging from jazz bar to dive bar. The Little Poet Bookstore no longer only housed these prized possessions, it also held mortifyingly intimate concerts. The crowd would be squashed into and out of every crevice and crack the space had on offer, until they were morphed and liquidated into a type of sweet poetic juiced wine.
And there I was, once again completely out of my depth– running about plugging in some kind of lead into some type of speaker, and latching onto any individual that may know how these things work. The audiences grew and grew, intrigued to see what would happen next. Each show would present a sense of unpredictability, each week different from the last. Nights of motorbikes with tap dancers. Mosh pits, with biscuits and dip. Nudity and art classes. Music ranging from death metal to classical, jazz to grunge, and poetry to hardcore.
So, in the end, it’s safe to say that The Little Poet was not formed by some genius artistic creation, or some brilliantly managed idea, but was found within whatever change I could find in my car ashtray. It began from a pile of dusty old books that eventuated into some type of filthy, black-out music venue. And even though our beloved crooked nook, the velvet and the books, our forever kingdom of filth–that hovel you've danced on, stomped on, and spewed upon–has since been demolished and developed, The Little Poet continues to grow. As it was not the end but the beginning of what was next…
What happened to all the books? Twenty boxes are stacked in my parents' shed.