From punk royalty to 200-year-old travel guide and the occult - Punk Against Poverty has it all

Punk legends, travel guides from 200 years ago and a touch of the occult - local social enterprise Punk Against Poverty have been selling a wide range of rare books.

Amongst them was a book over 200 years old, printed on handmade paper and written by William Coxe, titled travels into Sweden, Russia, Poland, and Denmark and a full set of 10 books, written in about 1921 on legends, myths and the occult, both of which received great interest and sold on the first day they were made available for sale, raising valuable funds for Punks work in the community.

The most exciting book for Team Punk was spotted by Director Steffi Curran when sorting through a donation of books and was written by the lead singer of punk band, Black Flag, Henry Rollins entitled ‘A Mad Dash.’

Steffi says: “I immediately recognised the name as the lead singer of a band I know well which was exciting enough, but I was overjoyed when I flipped through pages to discover it was from limited run of 1,500 books and was signed by the author. As a book without a barcode or a particularly enticing cover, this could so easily have been mistaken for something of no value, so I’m really glad it fell into our hands and we recognised its value. The book was advertised and sold immediately for an incredible £180, a wonderful amount for us.

“For us to have the honour of selling a book, written by someone who I guess could be described as Punk royalty is just wonderful and has helped us raise some very much needed funds to continue helping local people here in Torbay so I would really like to thank the lovely gentleman who donated this and other books.”

The team at Punk Against Poverty would also like to thank a wonderful gentleman called Ron, who has been supplying them with a wide range of fascinating literature to sell in their shop.
"These kind of donations mean so much to us and are a joy to make available to the public,” said Steffi

Punk Against Poverty work in Torbay to support people struggling with poverty through schemes such as their free food pantries and the free school uniform bank.

Their shop which stocks a wide range of clothes and of course books is located at 6 Tudor Buildings, Fore Street, Saint Marychurch, Torquay and is open 10am to 4pm Monday to Saturday.

More about the organisations work can be found on their website www.punkagainstpoverty.org