Lines on Glister & Glow

When a shooting star crashes to earth
it becomes a bookshop. Super
-califragilisticexpialidocious
spelled backwards is: dear bookshops
you are the sugar. Och yes,
the dream’s not without some drama,
but what writer worth their salt
hasn’t been tutted at for sneaking
their wares onto those pucker
‘Top Picks’ spots? Or been guilty
of taking every freebee offered
even on strictly ‘only browsing’ days
because the to-be-read pile’s grown
taller than organ music & that billionaire’s
guilty conscience. Eek, that’s nowt
compared to my mum’s rogue antics:
leafing through the poetry section just to
announce that’s ma boy to anyone in earshot
– the book raised up like a chalice
as onlookers gawp, gripe or panic.
A question: is there a more glorious
emporium of wonder to be caddish in
than a bookshop? Answer: hard no.
That said, I am sorry bookshops,
but suffice to say, it’s never not fawning,
I never don’t carol shop local & shop
indie like I’m chanting the chorus
of an anthemic pop banger. & I’ve not
stopped worshipping at your literary altars
since I first found my mettle mottling
behind the strong wooden beams.
Oh bookshops, I’ve taken to weeping
at your artsy window displays; taken to
rejoicing at your skin-trillingly thrilling
in-store readings; taken to oversharing
with your brigade of brilliant booksellers
only to be rewarded with hot
literary gossip. I’ve found refuge in your real,
& imagined, parlours: purring
like a wet cat scarved around human legs
as a tin of kippers opens. After all,
to be gifted books & gift books in return
is one of life’s greatest pleasures.
When a shooting star crashes to earth,
well, you’ll know it by the way it glows.

Michael Pederson

Edinburgh poet laureate Michael Pederson’s Lines on Glister & Glow was written as a commission for Independent Bookshop Week by the Booksellers Association UK.

In May, Pedersen visited Aotearoa for the Auckland Writers Festival. Starting at the sold out gala, he featured in eight events. His looming figure, bouncy curls and musical accented wisdoms led him to be a festival favourite – the bookshop sold out of his books on event number two.  

I sat on a wrap up panel with Michael, where he read this poem, his ‘love letter to bookshops,’ from Lines on Glister & Glow and I cried. I looked out to my close industry friend in the audience, she was crying too. Firstly, there’s nothing like a poem waxing lyrical about your chosen vocation but secondly, this poem captures all the best parts of being in a bookshop for everyone who visits – the bookshop – what he calls ‘the lighthouses of the high street’ – as a stage.  

Filling the senses, Lines is punctuated with crispy p’s that respond to the word bookshop: Top picks. The pop banger. The gossip! Parlours, purring. And taste! Sugar, salt, kippers. 

Traveling beyond the books – there’s the story of the writer – the aspiration, the glorious pride shining out of his Mum – ‘that’s ma boy.’ Can’t you just see it? 

The true goodness of a bookshop – the anticipation of discovery, of finding what you didn’t know you wanted, of gift of books, the safety and comfort of belonging. It’s a poem that is glorious to listen to, but it reads on paper with exceptional rhythm – the bustle & hum pulses off the page, it makes you want to drop everything and go.

Jenna Todd

Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning Scottish poet and author, a former Writer in Residence at Edinburgh University, and Edinburgh’s Makar (Poet Laureate). His prose debut, Boy Friends, was published by Faber in 2022 – it was a Sunday Times Critics Choice and shortlisted for Best Non-Fiction at Scotland’s National Book Awards. The Cat Prince & Other Poems, his third collection, won the Books Are My Bag Readers Award for Best Poetry 2023. Pedersen has also been shortlisted for the Forward Prizes for Poetry and won a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. His work has been praised by the likes of: Stephen Fry, Irvine Welsh, Ocean Vuong, Bernardine Evaristo, & many more. His debut novel Muckle Flugga was published by Faber in 2025 to rave reviews. Muckle Flugga was narrated as an audiobook by Jack Lowden and will appear in translation editions in 2026 in French, German, Spanish, and beyond.

Jenna Todd (Kāi Tahu) hails from Ōtepoti and was Time Out’s longtime manager until taking over ownership in 2026. New Zealand’s Young Bookseller of the Year 2015! Kobo Booksellers NZ Winter Institute Scholarship 2014
(Seattle). toddShe also works as a freelance photographer. Jenna reviews books monthly on RNZ’s Nine to Noon and fortnightly on 95bFM’s breakfast show and presented on the now retired book podcast Papercuts, on The Spinoff. She currently sits on the boards of the Auckland Writers Festival and Auckland University Press. She has been Chair of Booksellers NZ and sat on the NZ Book Awards Trust. She was a fiction judge for the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.