A great deal of poetry and other creative writing uses diverse archival material, including the literary, historical and the biographical. Yet the relationship of creative writers—and creative artists more generally—to existing archives has often been uncomfortable and has posed significant questions for the writers, historians and archivists involved. This issue brings numerous research and creative perspectives to bear on these relationships, including the perspectives of writers who have found the archives richly populated with material relevant to their projects, and writers who have found very little archival material at all connecting to their creative work. In every case, these writers have addressed archival material in particular ways, shaping it for their own creative and often political purposes.
Edited by Paul Hetherington
