Project Progress Reports (2005-2007)
This page will be updated at regular intervals throughout the Leeds Poetry Project to give information on the activities being undertaken and the project's progress.
Updates available:
January 2006
Work on the Leeds Poetry Project began in October 2005 when the project's first Research Officer, Kathryn Jenner, took up her post and has focused largely on preparatory tasks. A general survey was made of the contents of all of the archives and collections to be included in the project, and basic handlists produced. No attempt was made at the "survey" stage to physically reorder any of the collections, any existing schemes of arrangement were taken into account, and the existing library catalogue records for the collections were also assessed.
A number of audio recordings of or relating to the "Leeds poets" have been located in the School of English and transferred to Special Collections. The recordings are largely held on reel-to-reel tape, and will be transferred to digital format during the course of the project for preservation and access purposes. They include readings by and performances of works by Thomas Blackburn, John Heath-Stubbs, Geoffrey Hill, James Kirkup, Peter Redgrove, Jon Silkin and William Price Turner. A video recording of Jon Silkin has also been located, and will be transferred to DVD.
Papers relating to the Gregory Fellowship scheme and to the "Leeds poets" have been identified in the University Archive and the University's Central Records Office. This has been useful in researching the background to the Fellowships and poetry at Leeds, which is an ongoing task.
Work is underway towards defining schemes of arrangement for the Leeds Poetry collections which will, where appropriate, bring a degree of uniformity to the way in which the collections are arranged and catalogued. Draft schemes are currently being tested and revised as appropriate, starting with some of the smaller collections. At the same time, the storage needs of each collection is being assessed.
Discussions concerning the finding aid for the Leeds Poetry collections have commenced. A multi-level catalogue will be constructed using Encoded Archival Description (EAD), with the University of Liverpool's Cheshire software providing the information retrieval system.
July 2006
By the end of January 2006, schemes of arrangement were agreed for all of the Leeds Poetry collection bar the archive of Jon Silkin. The Silkin archive came to the University of Leeds following the poet's death in 1997 and is the largest of the collections being worked on for the Leeds Poetry Project. Work began on roughly sorting and arranging the 60 large boxes of papers that comprise the Silkin archive in February, a task that took 2 months to complete. Also during February, an initial investigation was undertaken into the links between the Leeds Poetry collections and other collections and archives held in Leeds University Library, including the archives of the London Magazine and the correspondence of Bonamy Dobrée.
Templates for the cataloguing of the Leeds Poetry collections were created in March 2006 using Encoded Archival Description, and basic guidelines on cataloguing and the use of the templates were produced. The templates were tested through the pilot cataloguing of the Kirkup and Heath-Stubbs collections.
Decisions were made during March on the archival storage materials needed for the re-housing of the Leeds Poetry collections in liaison with the University Library's Conservation Officer.
A second Research Officer, Stephanie Nield, joined the project in April 2006. At this stage cataloguing became the mainstay of the day-to-day project work, and work started on the cataloguing of the Silkin archive and the Redgrove collection. The cataloguing of the Redgrove collection is now largely complete (subject to revision), and work on cataloguing the Blackburn collection is underway. The cataloguing of the Silkin archive is ongoing and is projected to be largely complete by January/February 2007.
The Leeds Poetry team have given two presentations on the project: to the University of Leeds' Vice Chancellor, Michael Arthur, in March; and to the AHRC's Director of Research, Tony McEnery, during his visit to the University in May. Items from the Leeds Poetry collections were exhibited at both presentations.
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September 2006
Cataloguing of the Leeds Poetry collections is ongoing. The cataloguing of collections relating to Thomas Blackburn (19 boxes) and Wayne Brown (8 boxes) is now largely complete; cataloguing of the Silkin archive has so far has taken in poem drafts and papers relating to published poetry collections, dramatic writing (for stage and radio), and prose and critical work (including Out of Battle and The Life of Metrical and Free Verse in Twentieth-Century Poetry).
Work on transferring audio-visual items from the Leeds Poetry collections onto digital media was undertaken in August. CD copies and .wav files were created for 13 reel-to-reel tapes and 4 audio cassette tapes; 2 VHS video tapes were transferred onto DVD. The tapes include recordings of interviews and poets reading their own poems, and feature Thomas Blackburn, John Heath-Stubbs, Peter Redgrove, Vernon Scannell, William Price Turner, David Wright, Geoffrey Hill and Jon Silkin. Both video recordings are of Jon Silkin. Many of the tape recordings were originally held in the Poetry Room in the School of English, and were created as part of its recording programme from the early 1960s onwards. Other tapes from the Poetry Room have also been transferred to the care of Special Collection since the start of the Leeds Poetry project.
As a parallel activity to the work being undertaken on the Leeds Poetry archives, printed works held with the collections are being catalogued for the Library's online public catalogue by the Metadata Services team. Details of holdings for printed works in collections belonging to Thomas Blackburn (Brotherton Collection 20c Blackburn) and Geoffrey Hill (Brotherton Collection 20c HIL) are now available; it is expected that cataloguing of items from the Silkin Library will commence during autumn 2006.
There have been signs of increasing interest in the Leeds Poetry collections in recent months, including enquiries from overseas. Kathryn Jenner has also been involved in conducting sessions on the Stand archives with the poet and professor of literature Jon Glover for groups of creative writing students from the University of Bolton.
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January 2007
Cataloguing of the Leeds Poetry collections continues. The cataloguing of collections relating to David Wright, William Price Turner, Paul Mills, Poetry & Audience, and the School of English Poetry Room (including some audio recordings) is now largely complete. Work on collections relating to Jon Silkin and Kevin Crossley-Holland is ongoing. Printed items from the Silkin Library are now also being catalogued. Details of holdings processed to date can be found in the Leeds University Library catalogue, shelfmark Brotherton Collection 20c Silkin.
Sound recordings relating to the Leeds Poetry project are also the subject of current cataloguing activity. In addition to recordings specifically related to the "Leeds poets," other recordings relating to the Poetry Room established in the School of English in the early 1960s have been transferred to Special Collections, and a related collection of papers and correspondence identified.
Work is progressing on the search interface for the Leeds Poetry catalogue. Sample EAD files have been sent to colleagues in the Cheshire team at Liverpool University Library. It is expected that the search interface and functionality of the catalogue will be developed during the course of the next few months.
The Leeds Poetry team contributed to an exhibition of art works from the collection of Ronnie Duncan held in the University Art Gallery from 30 October 2006 to 26 January 2007. The Duncan collection includes works of art by Gregory Fellows in Painting and Sculpture including Terry Frost, Trevor Bell, Alan Davie, Kenneth Armitage and Hubert Dalwood. A selection of manuscripts and other items relating to the Gregory Fellowships in Poetry were also displayed as a means of highlighting the significance of the Gregory Fellowship Scheme and the work of the Leeds Poetry project.
The Leeds Poetry team is sorry to be saying good-bye to Stephanie Nield, who will be leaving in February to take up a records management position at Buckingham Palace.
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May 2007
Work continues on the cataloguing of the Leeds Poetry collections. Records have now been created for collections relating to the Northern House publishing venture and Vernon Scannell. An existing, provisional catalogue of the Stand archive in database form, previously only available to staff within Special Collections, has been converted into EAD in preparation for making it publicly available; work on editing and upgrading the converted records is now almost complete. The cataloguing of the Silkin Library is also ongoing.
The Leeds Poetry team were pleased to attend an event to celebrate the 70th birthday of Leeds-born poet Tony Harrison in March. Harrison is a graduate of the University of Leeds; his first published poem appeared in the student publication Poetry and Audience in 1957, and his first collection, Earthworks, was published by Northern House in 1964. The University hosted a screening of his television film Black Daisies for the Bride, which was first broadcast by the BBC in 1993, and won the Prix Italia in 1994. This was followed by a reading by Harrison of a selection of his poetry, including poems from From the School of Eloquence (1978), and more recent work relating to the wars in Bosnia and Iraq. Kathryn Jenner has been invited to speak with Tony Harrison about his memories of the poetry scene in Leeds in the 1950s and 1960s later this year.
In addition to the ongoing creation of the catalogue, plans for the development of the Leeds Poetry website are also now under way. Work has started on the collection of data which will provide the basis for a Leeds Poetry "timeline" The aim of the timeline will be to show the activities of the individual poets during the period 1950 to 1980, and the parallels and inter-relationships between them.
Professor Edward Larrissy will be taking up the newly-established Chair in Poetry at Queen's University, Belfast in June 2007. Professor John Whale will take his place as director of Leeds Poetry, although Professor Larrissy will continue to be involved in the project.
The Arts and Humanities Research Council have agreed to a 3-month extension to the Leeds Poetry project, which will now run until the end of December 2007.
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September 2007
Cataloguing of the Leeds Poetry collections under the terms of the current project was completed at the beginning of August. Further acquisitions for the Kirkup and Heath-Stubbs collections have been incorporated into the catalogue. These comprise a manuscript copy of James Kirkup's poem 'A City of the North,' deposited by Jane de Sausmarez; and audio and video recordings of John Heath-Stubbs, deposited by Adrian Risdon. A draft of the Leeds Poetry catalogue using Cheshire search and retrieval software has been made available to the project team; work is currently underway on testing the catalogue's functionality, and checking for errors and inconsistencies.
Work is underway on the revision and development of the Leeds Poetry web pages. The collection of data for the Leeds Poetry "timeline" is largely complete; biographical sketches of Leeds Poets, focusing in particular on their activities during their time at the University, are being compiled. Research for this element of the project has included contacting a number of the Leeds Poets, including the first and last Gregory Fellows, James Kirkup and Paul Mills. Both have contributed information on their experiences at Leeds.
Professor John Whale and Kathryn Jenner have assessed a large collection of audio cassette tapes in the School of English's Poetry Room relating to 20th century poetry, and have identified a number of additional recordings relating to the Leeds Poets. It is intended that the cassettes will be transferred to Special Collections in the near future for long-term care.
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December 2007
Work on the Leeds Poetry 1950-1980 catalogue under the terms of the current project is now complete, following a period of checking and editing, and liaison with the Cheshire team in relation to the catalogue's display and functionality. The catalogue was moved from a temporary server in Liverpool to a server at the University of Leeds in October 2007, and is now publicly available. Staff in Special Collections at Leeds University Library have direct access to the catalogue files via an administrative interface, which will allow for further editing and development as required.
Work has also been undertaken on existing collection-level records for the Leeds Poetry collections in the Library's public catalogue. Electronic links have been provided from these records to the more detailed descriptions available in the Leeds Poetry catalogue. New basic, collection-level records have been created for the Silkin and Stand Archives and Northern House Papers in order to provide similar access to these collections from the public catalogue. A record has also been created for the Leeds Poetry catalogue in its entirety; and links to the catalogue have been incorporated into the Special Collections and Leeds Poetry web pages.
Cataloguing of the Silkin printed collection has continued throughout 2007 as a parallel activity to the Leeds Poetry Project. At the time of writing, there are over 1300 entries for books and periodicals collected by Silkin in the Library's public catalogue (see Brotherton Collection 20c Silkin). Some of these items contain inserts, including correspondence and notes by Silkin. It has been possible to provide links to these items from relevant points in the Leeds Poetry catalogue.
Much of the work undertaken during the final phase of the Leeds Poetry project has been focused on the development of the web pages. These now include biographical sketches of 17 "Leeds Poets" (all 12 Gregory Fellows in Poetry, 4 student poets and 1 staff poet), which centre on their activities during their time in Leeds. Two interactive maps show residences of many of the poets included in the project, as well as those associated with them and various meeting and drinking places. More detailed information on the Gregory Fellowships is now available, including access to tables of all those who held the Fellowships in Poetry, Painting, Sculpture and Music. The website also provides an overview of poetry publishing activity at Leeds during the period covered by the project, including a brief historical introduction. The information on Poetry and Audience includes access to a survey of the magazine's content between 1950 and 1980, and a paper examining some of the literary networks that may have been influential in attracting submissions from poets external to the University.
Much of the research undertaken in developing the content of the website is based on evidence in the Leeds Poetry collections, and/or discussions with poets who were connected with Leeds during the period covered by the project, or who contributed to or edited Poetry and Audience magazine. Poets who have very kindly aided this research include Tony Harrison, James Kirkup, Wayne Brown, Paul Mills, Jon Glover, Alan Brownjohn, Tony Connor, George Szirtes, Anthony Thwaite and Anthony Mortimer.
Items from the Leeds Poetry collections were exhibited at meetings of the Brotherton Collection Advisory Committee and the University Council in 2007. Kathryn Jenner has also presented the Leeds Poetry 1950-1980 online resources in training sessions for Leeds University Library staff. The production of a leaflet describing the resources is currently in progress.
The Leeds Poetry team were sorry to hear of the death of Vernon Scannell at the end of November 2007. A small collection of obituaries has been added to his papers at Leeds.
It is expected that further acquisitions relating to poets connected with the University of Leeds will be added to the Leeds Poetry catalogue in due course. These will include literary papers of Tony Harrison, and further material relating to the Northern House Pamphlet Poets deposited with the Library by Jeffrey Wainwright.
