The Contemporary Poetry Archive: Essays and Interventions

by Linda Anderson (Editor), Mark Byers (Editor), Ahren Warner (Editor)

Overview

Explores critical and creative responses to the contemporary poetry archive

• Provides an innovative new dialogue between critics and creative writers on the value and practice of the literary archive
• Expandes the scope for understanding perspectives on, and the opposition between, creative and critical relations to archival materials
• Opens up a new cross-disciplinary agenda for thinking the archive as both a source for scholarship and a source of inspiration for creative practice

These 13 newly commissioned chapters examine the impact of archival poetry collections on both literary scholarship and poetic practice. They examine what we can learn from the drafts, notebooks and personal libraries left behind by poets and look at the ways in which the growth of poetry archives has changed the way poets think about their work. The contributing poets and scholars – including Susan Howe, Sean O’Brien and George Szirtes – present an in-depth account of the significance of poetry archives for contemporary literature. The collection provides a new cross-disciplinary agenda for thinking about the archive as both a source for scholarship and inspiration for creative practice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474432443
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	05/26/2021
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Linda Anderson is Professor of Modern English and American Literature at Newcastle University where she is also Director of the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts.

Dr Mark Byers is Lecturer in Contemporary Poetry at Newcastle University.

Dr Ahren Warner is a Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellow at Loughborough University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Contributors; Preface, Susan Howe; 1. Introduction: Archive, Theory, Poetry, Linda Anderson, Mark Byers, Ahren Warner; 2. T.S.Eliot and Derek Mahon: A Tale of Two Archives, Hugh Haughton; 3. Archival Poetics: Containing Multitudes, Mark Byers; 4. Digital Baedecker: A Feminist Experiment with Mina Loy’s Archive, Suzanne Churchill, Linda Kinnahan, Susan Rosenbaum; 5. Louis MacNeice and his Archives, Jonathan Allison; 6. On Efficiency: John Updike’s Poetry Archive, J. O. Gill; 7. Sylvia Plath’s Library: The Marginal Archive, Amanda Golden; 8. ‘Library of Opaque Memory’: Spectral Archives in Brandon Som, Mai Der Vang, and Bhanu Kapil, Sarah Howe; 9. Opening the Box: Exploring the Bloodaxe Archive, Linda Anderson; 10. ‘I am Already Historical’: In the Archive, Sean O’brien; 11. The Archive and the Mirror, George Szirtes; 12. AA(A), or Affect, Archives &Anecdotes, Ahren Warner; 13. Musée des Fragments: The Secret Memories of Ordinary Things, Carolyn Forché; Further Reading; Index.

What People are Saying About This

The British Library Richard Price

Are a poet’s manuscripts prototypes? scaffolding? medals of honour? What meanings does the institutional act of archiving produce? From modernism’s ambiguous collectability to reactions by contemporary poets coming to terms with the shock of being archived, this is a valuable set of reflections on the archive, and on poetry.