Writers deluge reopening of flood-hit Cumbria bookshop

Crime writers, poets and celebrity authors came together yesterday to support the reopening of the bookshop in Cockermouth that was devastated by floods last year. One of the casualties of the floods that hit Cumbria in November, the New Bookshop in Cockermouth has been trading from temporary premises for the last seven months. Yesterday, after extensive rebuilding, locals and visitors came out in force to support the reopening of the shop, which has been run by the same family for 40 years. "Hunter Davies came down because he lives locally, crime writer Ann Cleeves and poet Jacob Polley were there, and we had local thriller writer Matt Hilton too," said the shop's owner Catherine Hetherington. "People are so pleased to see us back – we've had so many people say they are so pleased to see another step being taken towards Cockermouth getting back to itself." A handwritten poem by the poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, written at the time of the flooding, was auctioned, with all proceeds going to the bookshop, while the prize-winning Cumbrian poet Polley wrote a poem for the occasion, "A Book of Water", which he read yesterday to shop visitors. "Yesterday morning was torrential rain but as the day went on it got nicer and nicer, and from 12 we were packed full for five hours," said Hetherington. The opening was also backed by a host of authors from publisher Pan Macmillan, including Ben Fogle, James Cracknell, Scott Turow and Andrew Marr, all of whom donated signed copies of their titles to help the bookshop get back on its feet. "To see the hard work and devotion of the New Bookshop being destroyed overnight was heartbreaking and we at Pan Macmillan are determined to help in any way possible," said Geoff Duffield, sales director at the publisher. "Independent bookshops are the lifeblood of our business and as publishers we utterly depend upon the passion and commitment of booksellers." A Book of Water by Jacob Polley I bought a book of water, its pages bound in weed, its spine of muscled silver, its words too quick to read. I slept with it beside me laid open somewhere still but when I woke the story had reached the windowsills. Paragraphs like rivers the rain had caused to rise were bursting from the covers, dragging shattered trees. I tasted then the power of what I'd thought confined. I smelled the roaring sewer beneath the storyline. I waded then and prayed, I prayed the book would shut, for I'd misunderstood the shape of water's plot. It's shapelessness meant ruin was everywhere at once – fields and fireplaces drowned, living rooms and highroads and bridges washed away, muddied skirting boards and cars carried away, greenhouses and green cords of wood, good shoes, TVs, scrapbooks and wedding photos, paper cranes, libraries and landfills swept away all in the one long water that swirled around my waist, through which life's narrative was jumbled as it raced. Reader, I thought I knew that ours was the order, the patterns and the borders, with which the truth's subdued to something safe and good. How wrong I was, and you who stand now where I stood have cleaning up to do. I bought a book of water I wouldn't buy again, its one page read disorder in letters tall as rain.