You can read this poem here.
Ok, this is about a bookshop, not a library; but we know what she’s talking about. The delicious sense of promise, the intoxicating thrill of ideas, of escape, of challenge, of new worlds which all Emily’s ‘frigate[s]’ offer. In the Dharker poem, I love the repetitions-with-variation of ‘you want it’ and ‘this is what you came for’: that sense, shared by all addicted readers, that there’s something we seek—we need—in books. It almost as if books and libraries (as well as librarians) can be seductive and kinda sexy.
Oh yes!