Liz Berry - Selly Oak Library, Birmingham

Poet Liz Berry visits a now empty building - Selly Oak Library in Birmingham, which closed in 2017. Her own mother served as a librarian for several decades and Liz reflects on how the the values she inherited from her mother's commitment, curiosity, and care are inseparable from a library's be-shelved walls.

Empty Spaces explores the beauty and melancholy of abandoned places that still hold meaning. Each episode invites a poet to inhabit one site of their choosing and breathe imagination, memory, and lyricism back into the surroundings via poetry.

Liz stands outside the building, to write a poem about the library's recent demise. Opened in 1906, the red-brick library now stands as a witness to a century of community life in bustling Selly Oak. As Liz reflects on the building’s history, she explores how libraries nurture belonging, enlightenment and imagination… and mourns their disappearance.

Producer: Sean Allsop
Executive Producer: Leonie Thomas
Sound Mix: Mike Woolley

An Overcoat Media production for BBC Radio 3