Something Else for the Weekend

Just a quick reminder of the free public events programme at UCL this weekend. Look for the building opposite Waterstones on Torrington Place and pop in through the black gates and the glass door to see some exhibitions (including our display of concrete poetry from Special Collections) and take part in activities from computer simulations and film screenings through to live tattooing.

Full programme here.

Get Your Hands on Poetry!

Following the well-attended pop-up exhibition in October, as part of the wider UCL Festival of the Arts, on Saturday there is a chance to see some different items from UCL’s collection of little magazines and alternative press publications. Slade Librarian Liz Lawes and Department of Information Studies PhD student Sara Wingate Gray have curated a selection of the concrete poetry, and Sara has also designed some bookmarks and an accompanying website, with support from a professional graphic designer.

From the event web-page:

Did you know that UCL Library holds over 12,000 small press poetry items?

As part of UCL Special Collections, the Poetry Store is a collection especially rich in visual, sound and concrete poetry: these forms of poetry are visually striking and innovative, questioning established forms and attitudes, all of which featured prominently in small press activity from the mid 60s onwards in Europe and America.

Come along to our hands-on exhibition to explore in more detail a specially-curated selection of these rare items, and learn more about their history from Liz Lawes (UCL Library Services), Anne Welsh and Sara Wingate Gray (UCL Department of Information Studies), who will help you explore these items on the day.

The Itinerant Poetry Library will also be opening for part of the afternoon and there is a wide range of other activities, all free, and almost all on a drop-in basis.

Make Your Mark on The Red Room

When Claire Thomson (Head of Scandinavian at UCL) first discussed The Red Room with me, I was really excited that she was willing to consider a mass annotation project as one of her exhibits.

I love annotation and marginalia: part of my PhD research involves deciphering Walter de la Mare’s annotations to his Working Library at Senate House. There’s been lots of great research conducted into annotation in general, and a lot of focus on certain famous (or, if you like your books pristine, infamous) annotators such as Coleridge and Poe.

The exhibit in The Red Room consists of some copies of the Norvik Press edition of The Red Room with a simple instruction for exhibition-goers to make whatever notes they like in the text, using any of the equipment provided. This includes pencils, pens, post-it notes and page-markers.

Given how fond Strindberg was of discussion, we like to think that he’d approve of this idea, and we are really looking forward to analysing the marks that people make in the books – which implements they choose to make their mark and whether the marks respond to the text on the page or whether they are doodles or remarks unrelated to what’s happening in the novel. We also intend to digitise the annotated copies and make them live in time for the UCL Festival of Reading in March 2013.

On Thursday at 4pm, I’ll be giving a brief talk on the project. So far, most people are choosing to use the post-its rather than mark the page itself, but there are some lovely contributions, like this Bird’s Eye View of Stockholm, inspired by the title of the first chapter in the book.

Full details of the event on The Red Room site.

If you are attending any of the other events at the Red Room, or are passing by Gower Street before 21 October, do call in and make your mark on Strindberg’s novel. Your contribution to the project will be much appreciated … and will even end up online in the Spring.