Sunday, October 26, 2008

A literary warning to shameful shoppers....

That's me, apparently!

I was happily surprised to see a poem of mine, Night Letters, quoted as part of an answer to the question - Dear Book Doctor, I haven't actually been affected by the financial crisis yet but it still feels unnecessarily frivolous to go out and buy lots of new clothes right now. What do you think? Eva, London - in the Financial Times yesterday.

According to 'book doctor', Rosie Blau:

"...the lesson of literature is that shopping won't serve you well.

"Like letters he keeps her bills/on a spike by their bed,/each pierced through the heart," run the first lines of Sarah Salway's poem "Night Letters". The picture that emerges of this shopper isn't attractive: "He thinks of her then, prowling the shops,/licking her lips at a colour, or the cut/of a jacket, focussed ahead,/ hearing nothing but the click/of her credit card."


Of course, Night Letters is taken from a series of poems based around a shopaholic, looking at the thin line between a pleasure and an addiction, so it wasn't supposed to be attractive. It's been hard to write too, because I seem to have become extra-sensitive to all the incentives to shop, spend money, buy this, that, anything in the quest to be a different person.

Perhaps that's why I've been enjoying this blog and this blog recently.

3 comments:

HJ said...

Hi Sarah!

Thanks for your link to my blog. I absolutely love yours and it's a great inspiration for an aspiring (but lazy) writer!

A quiet sit down is also fantastic, I can totally relate!

Tania Hershman said...

Congratulations, Sarah, how wonderful, I hope book sales shoot up!

Strangely, I am new to shopping, which may be wierd for a 38-year-old woman. I've given up eating chocolate, and buying clothes is the only thing that seems to give me a thrill. But I don't do it much, and I get easily freaked out and have to stop. So no danger of shopaholicism - I hope!

Sharon J said...

I'm pleased you enjoy my blog, Sarah. It's always nice to know that somebody out there's finding it useful :)

I love your writing so please don't let your vices get in the way. We all have them :)