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A man found $20,000 in a secondhand book. Can you top that? | Alison Flood

We all know reading is a profitable pastime, but few of us can say we've found $20,000 tucked inside an old book … can we?

Ooh! Imagine this: heading along to a secondhand bookshop, and finding that the book you'd picked up turned out to be stuffed with money. More than $20,000, in the case of the enigmatic "Carlos", who says he "closed the book real quick and ran for my car" on discovering what it contained.

Carlos sounds like a nice man. He's trying to find the book's real owner; if they haven't come forward within a couple of months, he'll give some of the money to charity and keep the rest. Good for him. He's certainly done better than the librarian who, last month, discovered an antique gun inside a donated book. Police described it as a "gold, wooden handled, 31-caliber, single shot, black powder gun", reported the Associated Press, and they're holding it as evidence. "Somebody just opened it up and said, 'Oh my'," assistant library director Phyllis Nelson told her local paper.

Although I once found a tenner inside the pocket of a jacket I bought from a charity shop – I gave it back – I've never unearthed anything at all intriguing, inscriptions aside, inside a secondhand book. I'm feeling a little jealous. And plotting a charity shop trip this afternoon. How about you – any money, or guns, to report? This is your safe place; you can tell us everything …

Alison Flood
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The Baby-Sitters Club is back in business – as ebooks

Ann M Martin's bestselling series joins Christopher Pike and Sweet Valley High on the roster of kids' classics undergoing an e-revival. But will there be more to come?

Following our look at Christopher Pike, and Sweet Valley High, here's another slice of nostalgia for any other children of the 80s out there: Entertainment Weekly tells us Scholastic is planning to reissue the first 20 of the Baby-Sitters Club novels as ebooks next month.

Age 10-ish, I wasn't as big a fan of these books as I was of the Wakefield twins' adventures, but there were tons of them in my local library, and they fed into my obsession with wanting to go to school in America and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and play softball. I think at one point I even tried wearing my hair in a side ponytail. It didn't go down well.

At any rate, I've read plenty of them. They were sweet enough, as far as I can remember – a gang of girls gets together to offer babysitting services – but did you know that apparently they've sold over 170m copies? That there are blogs about the hundreds of titles in the series? That people out there are imagining what might have happened to Kristy, Mallory et al when they grew up?

"The books tackle real-life themes and issues that still resonate today – friendships, family, and seeking independence," author Ann M Martin told EW, speculating on their vast popularity. Well, maybe – but those sales figures are still phenomenal, and are almost persuading me to eschew all the highbrow fiction I'd otherwise be reading and take another look when the ebooks come out. Although I confess that I'd still be more excited by a "Where are they now?", Sweet Valley Confidential-type novel – and as it happens, that's not entirely out of the question, according to Entertainment Weekly. Fingers crossed, then.

Children and teenagersFictionEbooksAlison Flood
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Forget Pippa Middleton's party pooper. Not all celebrity books are a bum deal

There's life in the maligned celebrity genre yet – as memoirs by the likes of Arnie, Bob Dylan and even Piers Morgan attest

Ah, Pippa Middleton. It's not really her fault, you know. Dazzled by the sight of her in a white dress, some chump at Penguin gave her several buckets of cash to write a book about pass the parcel. And so she did – and now nobody wants to buy it, and critics are mocking the poor lass. But can you blame her for accepting that fool's coin? Take the money and run, Pippa, that's what I say. Furthermore, I agree: turkeys are an ideal bird for large gatherings.

Besides, it's not like she's the only famous person to write a book that landed in the marketplace like a corpse dumped in an unmarked grave. Arnold Schwarzenegger is rumoured to have been paid millions for his recently published memoirs. According to the Daily Beast, it has so far sold 27,000 copies, most of them in October, the month it was published. Avengers vs. X-Men Versus #6, a totally shit comic featuring nothing but extended fight scenes from an equally shit comic of almost the same name, sold three times as many units in the same month. Snooki's novel Gorilla Beach has sold a paltry 3,000 copies since it was published in May, while curiously nobody seems to give a toss about 80s actor Andrew McCarthy's memoir of how travelling helped him to overcome his fear of settling down. Well, around 5,000 people do, but no more than that. And Britney Spears is soon to write a novel. Can you spell "fiasco"? She can't.

And that's just in the last couple of months. Go into the past and you'll find many big celebrity books that made oodles of cash vanish like a seaside magician fiddling with a publisher's gold watch. Edwina Currie's memoirs, anyone?

But does this mean that the publishing model of big name+any old crap=$$$" is finished? Don't hold your breath, my friends. Publishers have to make money somehow and throwing scads of cash at a famous moron is, well, easy. After all, glamour model Katie Price's novels sold, so it's not as if quality matters. We can look forward to many more years of "novels" and "memoirs" from people who barely know how to hold a pen, never mind whether i comes before e.

Is this much-maligned genre entirely awful? No. Every now and then, whenever I need a break from quality, I indulge. It started a few years back when I read Piers Morgan's memoir. Yes, I know he's a knob, but so does he, and the book was gossipy, entertaining and easy to read. I can't remember anything in it, of course, but I don't think that was the point.

And it wasn't the only good celebrity book I've read. Bob Dylan's Chronicles was widely praised, and even though I never listen to his music I gave it a whirl. It's very good: self-aware, nicely written, full of interesting stories and observations. Another great rock autobiography is Keith Richards's Life. When it came out, the papers concentrated on twaddle about Mick Jagger's alleged micro-penis, but over the course of Richards's book I absorbed not only the tale of a remarkable life led by a clever man who had (remarkably) never lost touch with reality, but also an excellent portrait of a transitional era in British culture. John Cale's What's Welsh for Zen is likewise a great and thoughtful rock memoir.

These books were good at least in part because the authors hadn't spent the past 40 years repeating the same anecdotes on chat shows; in many ways they were writing to counteract the myths that had accreted around their names. Written with some dude at the Times, but there was no trace of effort on the journo's part. It reads as though the legendary singer had mumbled into a tape recorder for a few hours and then shuffled off to drink a smoothie while his collaborator phoned it in almost as quickly as you can say "the cheque has cleared". Alice Cooper's Golf Monster reads like extended chat-show schtick. Recently I've been dabbling in Rick Wakeman's Grumpy Old Rock Star. Wakeman's voice is affable and engaging but every story has the feel of a well-worn anecdote rehearsed a thousand times down the pub. Still, none of those books are boring, and better yet, they can often be found in bargain bookstores for hardly any money at all!

Books by actors I tend to avoid. I did read Charlie Chaplin's autobiography and agree with everyone else that the first 200 pages are excellent. Simon Cowell is supposed to be vaguely literary, but who cares? I heard that Rob Lowe's autobiography is better than you might expect, but obviously I'm not going to pay for it. The same goes for Michael Caine's second autobiography. I am, however, up for Schwarzenegger's Total Recall – as soon as I see it on the "reduced" racks of my local bookshop, that is.

Actually, all that talk of actors reminds me. I once sat in a pub with some people from a prestigious publisher (hint: it sounds like phaber) and was horrified when an editor suggested getting Russell Brand to write a book of essays about Arnold Bennett. I mean, that's an atrocious idea, nearly as awful as making relevant-in-the-90s pop crooner Jarvis Cocker an editor-at-large. Wait, what's that you say? They did?

Still, I cannot end this brief overview of non-terrible celebrity books without mentioning the sub-category of cash-in titles by people made momentarily famous by a mega-scandal. These are usually twaddle but at least one of them is a fantastic read: The Politician by Andrew Young. You may remember him as the dead-eyed reptilian weirdo who degraded himself and his family for the sake of shiny-haired reptilian politician and fantasist John Edwards. Read that book, and shiver at its lies, its emptiness, its triviality; shudder at the hollow cores of the world's most ambitious men and the self-deception of the fools who follow them. Edwards is hardly unique, after all – he just got caught. Friends, forget your Ozzys, your Alices, your Keefs and all those other infamous lords of rock – here is the real heart of darkness.

• This article was amended on 15 November 2012, to correct the spelling of Edwina Currie's name.

Autobiography and memoirBiographyKeith RichardsBob DylanPiers MorganOzzy OsbournePippa MiddletonDaniel Kalder
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Self–published novels: where to start?

Having been pleasantly surprised by one self-published book, I'm seeking out some more gems. Any advice on what I should pick up first?

I read my first self-published novel last week: Kerry Wilkinson's Locked In. Self-publishing is an area I've been utterly intrigued by, in the past – intrigued by what self-published authors can achieve on their own, the frankly phenomenal sales heights, the millions of fans some of them can attract. But my intrigue has never, until now, led to reading one of these books. Call it snobbery, but I've so much to read anyway that I haven't had the time, or inclination, to pick up something which has most likely only been through the filter of one person's brain.

Locked In has changed my mind. Expecting little, I was pleasantly surprised. One of the self-publishing hits of last year – Wilkinson says the series has sold around 300,000 copies to date – it's a perfectly serviceable thriller. Sometimes the prose is a bit clunky. Sometimes it's all a bit obvious. But it's no worse than the serried ranks of perfectly serviceable thrillers churned out by traditional publishers, and sometimes it's better – fresher.

So I'm keen to dip my toe a little further into the self–publishing waters, to see what else is out there. Problem is, I'm not sure where to start. In the absence of any better ideas, I'm going to take a look at some of the self-published books which are doing best on Amazon.

High on its free chart this morning are Mary Campisi's A Family Affair, Debby Conrad's Love, Lies and High Heels and Michael Weems' Border Crossings. I've ignored the Barbara Freethy and the Edie Claire because they were originally traditionally published, so the books I've highlighted are respectively second, third and fifth in Amazon's free charts. That means people are reading them, but does it mean they are any good? I'm going to ignore my instincts, which say no, and find out for myself.

I'll report back next week. And in the meantime, if you have suggestions for other self-published novels that I should take a look at, then let me know. It's an area we on Guardian books are keen to get to grips with, but it's so vast and nebulous – new statistics show there were almost 250,000 books self-published last year – we're not quite sure how to tackle it. Any guidance would be much appreciated, so tell us about the gems we're missing out on, and we'll see what we can do.

Self-publishingFictionAlison Flood
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Live webchat: Polly Courtney

Post your questions now for the novelist Polly Courtney, who'll be offering advice on Friday 16 November from 1pm

How do you write a novel in 30 days? If you've read our how-to guide, you may well have a better notion of how to set about such a daunting task. You may be following the day-by-day tasks - but sometimes, of course, things don't go according to plan and you need someone to lend an ear and offer advice on how to move on to the next step. Well, with this in mind we've asked author Polly Courtney to answer your novel-writing questions in a live webchat this Friday 16 November, taking place here between 1-2pm (GMT).

Polly used to work as an investment banker, which proved to be a fertile ground for ideas as her first novel Golden Handcuffs, which she self published, was a fictional expose of the city. She continued writing, left her job and landed herself a three book deal. Then in 2011, Polly hit the headlines when she left her publisher HarperCollins after she objected to her books being marketed as chick lit, or as she neatly explains on her Twitter profile, she left 'over naff book covers.'

This is the third in a series of webchats we'll host on Friday lunchtimes, aimed at helping you finish your novel. To keep the chats focused, each will be around a particular topic covered in the how-to guides. This week, Polly will tackle your questions about how to deal with the trickier aspects of your storyline including how to untangle characters' goals and conflicts.

If you missed any of the guides or the accompanying worksheets, you can find everything you need over here.

Post your question in the thread below now, then come back at 1pm on Friday to chat live to Polly.

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Gif is America's word of the year? Now that's what I call an omnishambles | Alison Flood

Unlike their UK cousins, who named 'omnishambles' word of the year, OUP's noun-to-verb US lexicographers are unconvincing

I rather like the idea of a word of the year. We have a sports personality of the year, after all, and I like words better than sport, so why not?

I approve, as well, Oxford University Press's choice of "omnishambles" to take the title: not only was it coined by the brilliant The Thick of It, but it has a surprisingly useful meaning – "a word used to describe a comprehensively mismanaged situation, characterised by a shambolic string of blunders", says OUP – and a lovely ring to it.

Omnishambles. Just try saying it; it's a great workout for the mouth. I much prefer it to the other contenders put forward by OUP, at any rate: I know I'm not the only person to be driven wild with fury by the verb "to medal", and the concept of "mummy porn" fills me with rage at its dismissive snideness. I wouldn't have minded "pleb" taking the crown, just because it would have reminded us all of this, but thank God it wasn't one of the social media-spawned acronyms suggested, YOLO or FOMO.

Over in the US, OUP's lexicographers plumped for gif as their word of the year - and it's a verb, meaning "to create a gif file of (an image or video sequence, especially relating to an event)". It inspires the same sort of dread in me as "to medal" and "to podium", but OUP explains its reasoning thus: "Gif celebrated a lexical milestone in 2012, gaining traction as a verb, not just a noun. The gif has evolved from a medium for pop-cultural memes into a tool with serious applications including research and journalism, and its lexical identity is transforming to keep pace."

I can't see myself ever using it, and I remain unconvinced. Omnishambles, though – I'll be working that into discussions wherever I can. What do you think of the winners – and what's your personal word of the year?

Reference and languagesUniversity of OxfordAlison Flood
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Poem of the week: To Germany by Charles Hamilton Sorley

A moving, mature sonnet from a young soldier who had studied in the Fatherland but was destined to die by a German bullet

Charles Hamilton Sorley died in 1915 at the age of 20, killed by a sniper in the Battle of Loos. He left a small, uneven but often impressive body of poems, first published as a collection, Marlborough and Other Poems, in 1916. He had been travelling and studying in Germany prior to entering Oxford, when war was declared. This week's poem, a sonnet called To Germany, reflects his feelings for a country which has nurtured him and is now designated the enemy. The breadth of perspective is astonishingly mature.

Sorley consistently opposed conventional war-inspired sentimentality and jingoism, but his poems cannot conveniently be packaged together and labelled anti-war. In Barbury Camp, a monologue written from the point of view of a dead Roman soldier, for example, the speaker exults in the physical challenge of combat: "And here we strove, and here we felt each vein / Ice-bound, each limb fast-frozen, all night long. / And here we held communion with the rain / That lashed us into manhood with its thong, / Cleansing through pain. / And the wind visited us and made us strong." That desire for "cleansing through pain" seems to have been a strong component of Sorley's moral character, instilled by his public-school education, perhaps.

But there are no schoolboy heroics in To Germany. The mood is sombre and analytical, particularly in the octet. "You are blind like us" is a powerful refusal to allocate blame, and in the emotional climate of the time unquestionably demonstrates Sorley's boldness. The young of both countries grope and stumble through "fields of thought" just as they grope and stumble over fields of battle. Sorley contrasts Germany's political ambition ("… your future bigly planned") with the British establishment's narrow self-interest ( "the tapering paths of our own mind") but implies the effects of both are the same: intellectual incapacity. That unusual and rather awkward adverb "bigly" suggests the deliberate avoidance of irony and its easy laugh at imperial ambition. And it denotes straightforwardness. While still a pupil at Marlborough College, Sorley had presented a paper in which he castigated modern literature for refusing "to call a spade a spade". That bracingly prosaic ideal finds the clarity and forcefulness of poetry in the octet's magnificent concluding lines: "And in each other's dearest ways we stand, / And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind."

The sestet begins by envisioning the time "When it is peace". The "truer form" in which the countries and individuals will then see each other "with new-won eyes" has faintly biblical overtones. Such redemption is associated with the afterlife. The adjective "loving-kind" (like "bigly", an unusual grammatical construction) and the imagery of the handshake hint at an evangelical quality in Sorley's imagination.

The modifier "When it is peace" recurs at the end of the second sentence, heightening the sense of longing, with the "if" haunting the "when". Steering away from consolation, and bowing to the inevitability of continuing bloodshed, Sorley concludes with his favourite metaphor of the scourging elements: "… the storm, / The darkness and the thunder and the rain".

To Germany is a tightly constructed sonnet. Sharp, nerve-jangling sounds (blind, designed, pain, rain) contrast with the broader, gentler chords of land, stand, warm, firm, form. If "blind", as both adjective and noun, rules the octet, then "peace", also repeated three times, is the dominant noun of the sestet. Yet the hope Sorley expresses in this repetition remains measured and unassertive. It is subsequent history that ironises the vision – and continues to do so while so little of the world is at peace.

To Germany

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,
And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
But gropers both through fields of thought confined
We stumble and we do not understand.
You only saw your future bigly planned,
And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,
And in each other's dearest ways we stand,
And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again
With new-won eyes each other's truer form
And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm
We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,
When it is peace. But until peace, the storm,
The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

PoetryFirst world warCarol Rumens
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Sheffield writer brings home top prize for helping those lost in translation

Lecturer's rendition of a famous Irish poem is judges' unanimous choice. Now she's back to running classes at the uni - and The Grapes on Trippett Lane

Dr Kaarina Hollo of Sheffield university has won an award for doing a rather marvellous thing: giving fresh life to a famous poem through the form of a new translation.

Irish Gaelic speakers, at ease with one of the oldest languages still used in the British Isles, have long enjoyed the work of Derry O'Sullivan, but that has been less easy for those us with English only, and maybe a smattering of something to help on holidays.

I know we should learn a particular language if we are keen to enjoy its literary treasures; and maybe Irish Gaelic will join my – and others' – list of retirement projects. But in the meanwhile congratulations to Dr Hollo who has taken first prize with her O'Sullivan poem in the Open Award section of the Times/Stephen Spender prize for poetry in translation.

She is down in London today, Tuesday 13 November, along with other award winners in four categories which attracted entries from poetry translators aged between eight and 86. The range is impressive; the finalists in the under-14 section alone translated poetry from French, Spanish, Bengali and Dutch.

Dr Rollo's choice was O'Sullivan's Marbhghin 1943: Glaoch ar Liombo, an elegy on his stillborn brother by the 68-year-old poet, a former priest who is now married with three children and teaches at universities in Paris. The poem has previously been translated into English by Michael Davitt and O'Sullivan himself has translated Irish poetry into French and collaborated with a Mexican artist in Latin. But Hollo's work was rated by the judges as exceptional and especially welcome.

The poem is described in The Cambridge History of Irish Literature as:

one of the most achingly beautiful Irish poems of the twentieth century

and Hollo's feeling for its power may come in part from her cosmopolitan background; she is a one-woman example of the diverse world of the north of England today. A lecturer in Irish at Sheffield, she says:

My own family background is German, Finnish, Latvian and Kashubian, so I have never considered myself someone with a fixed mono-cultural identity. I could perhaps see myself as a bit of a translation.

She is also the daughter of two literary translators and the grand-daughter of a third, although none of these connections lead to Ireland. She says:

People are sometimes surprised to find out that I have no family connection to Ireland. but the Irish language and the literature and culture associated with it are so rich and interesting that there is really no reason for that.

I first got into the language through listening to Irish music as a child, particularly the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. I didn't actually start studying it until I was 13 or so, when a friend of the family gave me a copy of Teach Yourself Irish.

Now she enjoys helping others do the same, with her own outpost of the Gaeltacht at a community-based Irish language class which is sponsored by the Sheffield Irish Association. Classes are held at The Grapes on Trippett Lane in Sheffield and now attract more than 25 enthusiasts aged from 20-70.

You can read her translation Stillborn 1943: Calling Limbo, see the poem in the original Irish and check out the judges' comments at length on the website of the Stephen Spender Trust here.

PoetryIrelandSheffieldUniversity of SheffieldLanguagesMartin Wainwright
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Tips, links and suggestions: Our review list and the books you are reading today

Your weekly space to tell us what you're reading and what you'd like to see covered on the books site, plus our review list

Afternoon all, especially to the new faces from last week's thread. If you have just come across this blog on your travels around the web, welcome. This blog is for anyone who has ever read a book and enjoyed it. Stick around; you may find it's just up your street.

If we had such a thing as a TLS prize, it would this week have to be awarded to lukethedrifter who has not only devoured a large number of books, but has also kicked off a very interesting project and conversation to go alongside his reading list:

Well, I've been away, and reading almost constantly. Here's my list, with a brief review:

I finished The Crust on Its Uppers, my 1960s London book in my attempts to read a novel set in London in every every decade of the C20th, written in that decade. It was very, very good, and even the constant use of cockney rhyming slang eventually seemed normal to me. Well recommended.

From there, I went to Trinidad, with Shiva Naipaul and The Chip-Chip Gatherers... Still looking for London books for the 1900s, 1910s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, if anyone has suggestions. I have a suspicion I've done a 1990s one through Martin Amis, but can't be certain off the top of my head. I will repeat this decade anyway. The list, for those with an interest:

1920s: The Green Hat
1930s: Hangover Square (Patrick Hamilton)
1940s: London Belongs to Me (Norman Collins)
1950s: The Lonely Londoners (Sam Selvon)
1960s: The Crust on Its Uppers (Derek Raymond)

If you'd like to find out where the London reading list took Lukethedrifter after Trinidad, you can read the whole post here.

As is often the way of TLS, other readers then began to suggest books for the project. New TLS member MsCarey wrote:

Would The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi (published 1990) do as your 90s novel? For women and London books I like Barbara Pym and Muriel Sparks. They are by no means state of the nation novels but still a great read.

7severnsisters suggested:
Luke-If you want a woman writer on your list of books set in London,you must read "Mrs Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf-The book is set in 1925 and is a stream of consciousness book, I love it.

and AggieH wrote:

Harare North. Viewing the entire literary world from my own navel, Chikwava was one of 'my' finds of recent years. He has a very distinctive voice. My instinctive recollection of the book: funny, bleak, realistic - an appealing telling of the appallingness of exile. It could arguably qualify as one of your 'London books'.

Keep us posted on your progress, lukethedrifter.

What are you reading at the moment? Something good? Tell us about it in the thread below. Here's our review list for this week, but subject last minute to last minute changes.

Non-Fiction

• Interventions: A Life in War and Peace by Kofi Annan
• The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery by Catherine Bailey
• I am Spain: The Spanish Civil War Through the Eyes of the Britons and Americans Who Saw it Happen by David Boyd Haycock
• Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis by Helen Bynum
• Derrida: A Biography by Benoit Peeters
• Inside The Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Ray Monk
• On Helwig Street: A Memoir by Richard Russo

Fiction

• Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray
• A Blink of the Screen: Collected Short Fiction by Terry Pratchett
• The Sound of Things Falling by Gabriel Vasquez
• Havisham by Ronald Frame
• Lemony Snicket Who Could That be at This Hour?

Guardian readersHannah Freeman
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What now for Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Brazil's national poet?

The author's statue sits with its back to the sea in Rio, gazing towards his home in Minas Gerais – but a campaign group wants to turn it around

Every time I'm in Rio, I make sure I go to the Copacabana. Not for the sand, or the sunshine – though there's plenty of both – but to pay my respects to Brazil's best-loved poet, Carlos Drummond de Andrade.

A statue of Drummond has been sitting on the stretch of the beach nearest to his Rio de Janeiro flat since the centenary of his birth in 2002, baking serenely under the tropical sun while tourists pose beside it. He may he perched in one of Rio's most picturesque spots, but the bronze Drummond has his back turned to the ocean view. I imagine that he's looking towards the mountains of his native Minas Gerais.

He was born in the town of Itabira, about which he wrote longingly in later life: "Itabira is just a photograph on the wall. But how it hurts!" Like most provincial writers of his generation, he moved to Rio, then the country's capital, and made a living as a civil servant in the ministry of education. Rio became his home and his muse, but Minas Gerais was never far from his thoughts.

A group of well-meaning but misguided cariocas have recently started a petition to turn the statue around, so that the poet can forever gaze at the sea – a cliched gesture that Drummond would surely have detested. His famous line about Rio, "There was a city written into the sea", is carved on the bench that supports the seated effigy, but it was the inner vistas that interested him most. He was a poet of human solitude: "What now, José / The party is over, / the light is out, / the people have left, / the night is cold, / what now, José?"

His observations ranged from the mundane to the metaphysical, often combining both, as in one of his most famous poems: "In the middle of the road there was a stone / there was a stone in the middle of the road / there was a stone / in the middle of the road there was a stone." Drummond was also a prolific writer of erotic poetry (most of which was only published posthumously), and could be slyly irreverent: "The arse, how funny it is. / Always smiling, never tragic".

I first came across Drummond because my wife's family comes from Minas Gerais as well. This landlocked Brazilian state has produced many of the country's greatest writers, but the poet towers magnificently over them all. He's included in almost any anthology of the Brazilian poetry and is also well-known for his prose, once claiming that writing journalism was the only thing he did with any pleasure. Brazilian readers, it seems, can't get enough of a writer so popular that his Friendly Poem ("I am working on a song / that will awaken men / and make children sleep") was printed on the country's banknotes in the late 1980s. His instantly recognisable features (long face, oversized eyeglasses) have become iconic and appear not only on the covers of his books but on T-shirts, book bags and street posters.

He died at the height of his fame, only a few months after receiving one of the highest accolades Rio de Janeiro has to offer: he was chosen as the theme for the carnival parade by one of the city's leading samba schools.

"Poetry is necessary," he once wrote, "but is the poet?" This year's Dia D – a day of readings, discussions and exhibitions inspired by staff at the Moreira Salles Institute – showed how readers remain as loyal to the gentle man from Itabira as they do to his enduring work.

PoetryBrazilAmericas
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