• KEY HIGHLIGHTS
• ARCHIVE LED TEACHING
• VISITING FELLOWS
• PUBLICATIONS & BROADCASTS
• ENQUIRIES - TOPICS AND THEMES
• STATISTICS - VISITS AND ENQUIRIES
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
Symposium: Poetry, Representation and the Archive, 25 May
As part of our Mellon Foundation funded project to build a pioneering collection of underrepresented poetries in the British Archive for Contemporary Writing (BACW) at UEA, we held a one-day symposium in the Training and Enterprise Centre that brought together fifty researchers working in the UK and internationally to discuss the kinds of questions such a project raises. The acclaimed and prize-winning poet, Bhanu Kapil, delivered the keynote, which will be available on our website soon. The symposium was followed in the evening by a public event with drinks reception and poetry readings to mark the launch of the archive of UEA alumna Sarah Maguire: feminist poet, critic, and founder of the Poetry Translation Centre. Further information: Events - Towards a Centre for Contemporary Poetry
Poet in Residence writing workshops throughout Norfolk
Our Mellon Foundation funded poets in residence - Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Joelle Taylor and Gail McConnell - have inspired the public to write and share poems as part of series of June writing workshops held in Cromer, Thetford and King’s Lynn public libraries. The participants’ work will feature in library exhibitions during July-August, and at UEA in November, and will be archived alongside the poets' archives at UEA. The poet Jay Bernard will hold their workshop ‘What Gets Remembered?’ in Great Yarmouth Library on 20 July. Further information: What Gets Remembered Workshop
Event co-ordinators, Justine Mann (UEA) and Eve Mathews (Norfolk Library and Information Service) spoke to BBC Radio Norfolk about the events on 16 June. Angelle Joseph - Sam Day sits in - BBC Sounds [40:19-50:16]
ARCHIVE LED TEACHING
Digital Media Theory and Practice Workshop Seminar UG, 9 May
A session looking in depth at the risks, challenges and opportunities presented by archival material; looking at the dangers of the obsolescence of analogue formats and how the archival community is learning to navigate digitising the unique material presented to them and preserving them for the future. Students handled archive originals and looked at case studies delving into the heritage sector from a practical perspective. Attendees: 4.
Publishing MA Module Seminar, 10 May
A session examining what the archive can tell us about the publishing industry. With examples of publisher - author relationships from the archives of Lee Child, Graham Greene, J.D. Salinger, Tash Aw, Roger Deakin, Mark Cocker and many more. Students examine every step of an author’s journey from first approach through to drafting and editing a work. Alongside supporting the creative process, we see the publisher’s role in marketing, publicity, managing intellectual property and rights for translations and adaptations. Taking the rough with the smooth, students see the role of publishers in the business of being a writer. Attendees: 7
Creative Writing MA. Writers and Archives Guest Speaker Panel: Creative Writing Research Methodology Day, 24 May
An all-star panel of archival authors came to speak to LDC MA students on the role of archives in their work. Sara Taylor author of The Shore and The Laura’s, Fiona Sinclair Writer in residence at BACW and Nonia Williams Academic Curator of the Doris Lessing Archive were joined by Justine Mann from BACW speaking about the new frontier of digital preservation. We heard about archives as inspiration, detail and a source of paid work and discussed what the future looked like for writer’s archives. Attendees: 72.
VISITING FELLOWS
In June we welcomed international visiting fellow Maya Kucherskaya from the University of Moscow. Maya has spent a month researching the development of creative writing courses starting with Malcom Bradbury’s archive at UEA. Further information on Archives and Collections Visiting Fellowships.
PUBLICATIONS & BROADCASTS
'The Swimmer: the Wild Life of Roger Deakin’ by Patrick Barkham
This wonderful biography, published in May, draws from Deakin’s notebooks, diaries, letters, recordings, published work and early drafts.
“The archivists have been fantastically helpful, and I thank them for giving me access to this fabulous trove in a time of coronavirus, for retrieving so much, and for making the UEA library a pleasure to work within.” [Patrick Barkham].
‘Great British Railway Journeys’
The literary archives at UEA featured in this recently aired BBC2 TV programme (series 14:9). Michael Portillo meets Jean McNeil (Professor of Creative Writing) and is shown some of the manuscripts deposited by former students of the celebrated MA Creative Writing course. He also participates in a creative writing workshop.
ENQUIRIES - TOPICS AND THEMES
BACW COLLECTIONS
AP WATT publishing agents TASH AW Unpublished stories DORIS LESSING 1940s love letters to John Whitehorn; rights for a new foreign translation ROGER DEAKIN photographs
OTHER COLLECTIONS
JOHN HILL ARCHIVE Sotherton, Suffolk HUBERT LAMB ARCHIVE Funding of climate change research PRITCHARD PAPERS Business management in the 1930s; the Long Chair; image rights SOLLY ZUCKERMAN The merger of Bedford College with Royal Holloway; the Bernstein Israeli Trust STEFAN MUTHESIUS ARCHIVE University of Lancashire architecture TINKLER & WILLIAMS THEATRE ARCHIVES Great Yarmouth Hippodrome & Gilbert’s Circus
STATISTICS - VISITS & ENQUIRIES
Archives: 172 (28 remote): UEA 121; UK 28; Int’l 23
Special Collections: 12 (1 remote)
Microfilm: 1
