The Poetics of the Archive: Creativity and Community Engagement with the Bloodaxe Archive

The archive of Bloodaxe books, newly acquired by Newcastle University, is one of the most exciting archives for contemporary poetry that exists. The challenge is to unlock its meaning and use by seeing it as more than a scholarly resource, accessible through a standard search-based catalogue, and to allow more creative, open-ended and playful interactions with it. These interactions are made possible through a reframing of the traditional idea of an archive, by challenging the notion of search as simply objective, and designing new kinds of web interface with the archive. The research draws on textual theory and deconstruction, new thinking within museum studies and current research in computing science and Information Retrieval which sees the potential in dialogic structures. Two research processes will underpin this project. One is to bring together a number of community groups of amateur and professional poets, and school groups, who will have access to the physical archive, and who will then participate in (1) producing creative responses to the archive and generating new materials (2) designing new digital interfaces, which enable and follow their explorations and thinking about poetry. The second research process is to bring together a multidisciplinary group of researchers who can forge a new interdisciplinary framework for thinking about literary archives, and about the enabling of creativity through participatory workshops. The project will draw on an impressive range of expertise from Newcastle University's Digital Interaction Group in Computing Science, located in Culture Lab, already core partners in two AHRC-funded projects, from English and Creative Writing, where some of the UK's pre-eminent poets are on the staff, and Fine Art, where there is already expertise in the visualisation of collections and archives. This project will produce three kinds of digital outputs: a search catalogue, a 'generous', exploratory, interface which will enable multiple forms of visualisation, aggregation and comparison of archive content, and an application programming interface (API), which will drive these and other novel representations. The visual material will be generated by the digitisation of those part of the physical archive cleared for copyright, new 'born digital' materials created through filmed interviews, readings and conversations, and different visual representations of the archive, and artistic mash-ups. These all will form the outcomes of the project but there will also be an interim symposium and a conference/ festival and exhibition which will draw a wide public audience. The project will engender interest in contemporary poetry for diverse groups, and work with school groups will be represented by specific access points to the website which will support its future use in schools. The methodology, research insights and their implementation will be transformative, and will drive research agendas on literary archives and their use and representation for the future.

This interdisciplinary project on the Bloodaxe archive will bring together a large number of poets, writers and readers through community groups who have no institutional or academic affiliation but who have formidable levels of expertise. They represent a community of practice whose knowledge and creativity is not generally either recognised or called on by academic specialists. There are important bridges to be built between the University, literature specialists and readers and writers in the community. Our developing relationship with the Poetry School will allow us to access many other such poets and poetry enthusiasts nationally, and whilst it is impossible to work directly on this project with all of them, the asset that is being created for the future will provide tools for it to be shaped and expanded through ongoing interaction with different groups.
NCLA and its public engagement work will provide a context for the project; NCLA also works closely with the Poetry Society, the British Council, the Scottish Poetry Library and members of the project team, Herbert, Kay and O'Brien, are active in the national and international poetry scene and will bring other possibilities of engagement worldwide.

A public conference/festival and exhibition at the end of the funded project will attract a wide audience, and we will invite poets (from Bloodaxe's extensive catalogue) and poetry specialists to speak. The festival will coincide with an exhibition which will be an opportunity to display the visual materials and visualisations, including films, and draw in different audiences. Bea Colley, participation producer at the Southbank Centre, has already expressed an interest in showing films and hosting the exhibition, and we would see this as an exciting way of broadening our scope to other audiences and attracting media interest. The involvement of Alice Quinn, Director of the Poetry Society of America, will ensure the project is reported on in USA, and we will be eager to follow up all touring opportunities for the films and exhibition. The possibility of Beatrice Rubens, BBC radio producer, making a programme about the project has already been discussed and we have already worked successfully with her on a programme to be broadcast BBC Radio 4, 24 October, 2013 about a poetry installation.

Work with schools opens up another development and the instigation of a new A-Level in Creative Writing provides a context for collaboration between schools and University in the area of creative writing. Providing different access points to the asset and encouraging new ways of interacting with it by schools not just locally but nationally is an exciting future prospect.

Materials relating to the process of the project will be incorporated into the website, and there will also be a final report setting out directions for the future. We aim to set up new ways not just of communicating with but joining with poetry enthusiasts in building an asset which is open and evolving, and which challenges them with new frameworks and aggregations of knowledge, surprising conjunctions and inspirations to creativity.