• KEY HIGHLIGHTS
• ARCHIVE LED TEACHING
• APPOINTMENTS
• ENQUIRIES - TOPICS AND THEMES
• STATISTICS - VISITS AND ENQUIRIES
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
Towards a Centre for Contemporary Poetry in the Archives, 26 September
We officially launched our Mellon Foundation funded project to an audience of 85 at the National Centre for Writing. Our Visiting Poetry Fellow, Will Harris, and the poetry critic and academic, Jeremy Noel-Tod, led the poets through two panels of readings, reflection and discussions on the nature of archiving and the creative process. Over the course of the next year our four exciting contemporary poets in residence: Jay Bernard, Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Gail McConnell and Joelle Taylor, will work with us to create archives of their own writing that will live here in UEA Library. They will also reflect creatively on the archiving process, and lead poetry workshops in local public libraries. The launch was a memorable evening of readings and conversation in the beautiful medieval setting of Dragon Hall. The discussion between the poets covered everything from the idea that 'the body is an archive' to the possibility of archiving a smell! It was great to see so many of our students there, taking notes and feeling inspired.
A captioned recording of the event will be issued in November 2022. Email archives@uea.ac.uk to be notified of its release.
Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Joelle Taylor, Jay Bernard, Gail McConnell. Copyright Andi Sapey
Jay Bernard, Will Harris, Joelle Taylor. Copyright Andi Sapey
Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Jeremy Noel-Tod, Gail McConnell. Copyright Andi Sapey
Doris Lessing: Out of the Archive – English: Shared Futures (englishsharedfutures.co.uk) Manchester Met University Conference, 7-8 July 2022
Matthew Taunton, Nonia Williams and Justine Mann provided a panel of papers ‘Out of the Archive’ highlighting the research and curation work undertaken by all three as part of the Doris Lessing centenary exhibition and programme of events held at UEA in 2019-2020 entitled Doris Lessing at 100. The panel reflected on Doris Lessing and her writing through the lens of her extensive archive, held at UEA. It argued for an energising and (re)engagement with Lessing, as well as demonstrating the different kinds of scholarly work that working with the rich resource of Lessing’s archive can generate. The panel reflected on the Doris Lessing centenary celebrations at UEA and considered opportunities for future scholarly work. 15 attendees
Literature as Cultural Heritage: Manuscripts : Philology : Archives, Conference, 28-30 July
Justine Mann joined scholars from the British Library and the Harry Ransom Center, as well as Heidelberg, Oxford, Antwerp, Cardiff and Burgundy at an international forum at the University of Heidelberg in Germany to discuss the past, present and future of the archived literary manuscript. Justine highlighted the Mellon funded project ‘Towards a Centre for Contemporary Poetry in the Archive’ which takes a proactive and community led approach to the archiving of poets from currently underrepresented groups in British and Irish literature. The UEA’s Storehouse Model for collecting archives from writers earlier in their career was highlighted as a useful tool in building dynamic collections and raising awareness of the precarity of born digital material and the need for proactive and collaborative measures towards digital preservation.
Open Day, 10 September
Welcoming prospective students and their families into the archive is a great pleasure. On September 10th we welcomed 26 people to our reading room and teaching area to view some of our best loved treasures. These included love letters written by Nobel Prize Laureate Doris Lessing in the 1940s, the diary of a Suffragette written in Russia during World War I and the drafts of prize-winning novelists. We love to show how students at UEA study not just the written word but also how to become and be a writer with archives giving a unique perspective on the creative process. We also enjoyed fascinating discussions on scientific ethics, feminism and the role of the archivist in preserving underrepresented voices. We can’t wait to meet the class of 2023/24 next September!
Filming in the Archive
On 9 August, a team from BBC Maestro filmed the Lee Child Archive for a Lee Child masterclass on writing popular fiction. The tutorials, produced by Child’s authorised biographer Heather Martin, can be found at this Link
New collection: Doris Lessing and Diana McVeagh Correspondence
This small but important sub-collection of the Doris Lessing Archive has been catalogued and is now available to researchers. Further details are available in this blog post by Helen Busby.
ARCHIVE LED TEACHING
MA Crime Writing Yr2, 8 September
As part of a two hour seminar, Justine Mann and Henry Sutton introduced crime writing students to the Lee Child Archive and some of the other crime writing material held in the British Archive for Contemporary Writing. Students were provided with access to original material, charting Child’s rise from a debut novelist approaching literary agents for the first time, to his rise to become a global bestselling novelist, entering the bestselling charts at number one. Students were able to discuss marketing material and sales analysis from within the publishing houses that created the strategy to achieve his meteoric rise. They also browsed material illustrating the craft of redrafting and the collaborative effort of editing a book into its published form. 14 in person attendees.
A selection of some of the very positive student feedback:
‘Fantastic session. Really interesting to see a professional drafting process as well as editorial feedback. It is a real privilege to have access to these materials.’
‘Well presented, well executed, really fascinating.’
PGT LDC Induction, 28 September
Archivist Helen Busby and Academic Director Jeremy Noel-Todd welcomed new postgraduate taught students in LDC by introducing them to the treasures and opportunities awaiting them in the archive. Beginning with Charles Lamb’s horror at seeing John Milton’s Lycidas in messy draft form, and wishing it had been discarded into the river Cam, we concluded that peeping behind the curtain at the creative process is both a shock and a privilege. From the handwritten first drafts of famous novels to learning about the cut and thrust of the publishing industry our original material is here to inspire, inform and support our students as they become scholars and authors themselves. Attendees: 45 in person attendees.
APPOINTMENTS
LDC postgraduate, Rufus Talks, is continuing for a third term in his role as Assistant Cataloguer of the Sarah Maguire Archive, this time until the end of January 2023, thanks to a further generous donation from a close friend of the poet and translator. This additional internship enables Rufus to work on the formal launch of the archive, process and preserve some of Maguire’s digital archive and describe additional deposits of Maguire’s letters from some of her correspondents.
ENQUIRIES - TOPICS AND THEMES
BACW COLLECTIONS
ANTHONY GREY China and The Long March; AP WATT Arthur Conan Doyle copyright valuation CHARLIE HIGSON screenplay adaptation of The Enemy DORIS LESSING ARCHIVE fictional techniques in Lessing’s biographical writing
OTHER COLLECTIONS
FRANK THISTLETHWAITE Doing Different in a Cold Climate H.H. LAMB Climate periodisation PRITCHARD PAPERS Visits from Isokon Trust, The Courtauld Institute of Art, and Yale University - to research the modernist flats and furniture design of the 1930s (for books and exhibitions); plywood furniture (for a calendar); the 1934 opening ceremony of Isokon Flats (for a film); Vere Gordon Childe, former Director of the Institute of Archaeology UEA COLLECTION landscape and buildings (for an exhibition); origins of the listening and support service Nightline ZUCKERMAN School essays of children experiencing the 1940s bombing blitz in Hull; psychological surveys of civilians in the Blitz.
STATISTICS - VISITS & ENQUIRIES
Archives: 193 (63 remote): UEA 82; UK 85; Int'l 26
Special Collections: 11
