Happy New Year, my bright and shiny lit-nerds! I hope your festive season was full of well-behaved loved ones and smelly new books. We’re kicking off 2014 in fine style here at Malvern, with a couple of events you’ll want to immediately note down in your brand-new Fast Disappearing Red Telephone Boxes of Wales calendars…

First up, we’re introducing a new monthly reading series for all you poetry fiends. We’re calling it Everything is Bigger (naturally), and it’ll be hosted by our very own Tyler Gobble. Our inaugural Bigger reading will take place on Wednesday, January 15th, at 7pm, and will feature three brilliant poets who need no introduction (but they’ll probably get one anyway; we’re polite like that): Dean Young, Blake Lee Pate, and Vincent Scarpa.

And on January 26th we have something rather special for you: a display of artworks from Josh Ronsen’s Tiny Art Exchange (the tiny art above is by Reed Altemus). Here’s how Josh describes the Exchange:

I send you something tiny, you send me something back equally tiny. Someday, I’ll have enough pieces to fill a bathtub.

We won’t have a bathtub’s worth at Malvern, but we will have a great heap of miniature artworks for you to sift through (and yes, a very gentle fondling of the artwork is allowed, as some pieces are double-sided).

We’ll look forward to seeing you in the store for BIGGER poetry and TINY art! And in the meantime, let’s get the new year off to a handsome start with some loveliness from the aforementioned Mr. Young…

The Infirmament (from First Course in Turbulence, 1999)

An end is always punishment for a beginning.
If you’re Catholic, sadness is punishment
for happiness, you become the bug you squash
if you’re Hindu, a flinty space opens
in your head after a long night of laughter
and wine. For waking there are dreams,
from French poetry, English poetry,
for light fire although sometimes
fire must be punished by light
which is why psychotherapy had to be invented.
A father may say nothing to a son for years.
A wife may keep something small folded deep
in her underwear drawer. Clouds come in
resembling the terrible things we believe
about ourselves, a rock comes loose
from a ledge, the baby just cries
and cries. Doll in a chair,
windshield wipers, staring off
into the city lights. For years
you may be unable to hear the word monkey
without a stab in the heart because
she called you that the summer she thought
she loved you and you thought you loved
someone else and everyone loved
your salad dressing. And the daffodils
come up in the spring and the snow covers
the road in winter and the water covers
the deep trenches in the sea where all the time
the inner stuff of this earth surges up
which is how the continents are made
and broken.