Major contemporary poetry and video archives donated to University College Cork

22 Feb 2024

• Archives of the SoundEye Festival and Meshworks donated to the UCC.
• The Archives feature an extensive collection of materials related to contemporary poetry.
• The acquisition marks an important step the development of contemporary cultural collections at the university.

University College Cork (UCC) is delighted to announce that the poetry archive of the SoundEye Festival of the Arts of the Word and the video archive of Meshworks have been acquired by UCC. The acquisition of these archives marks a new stage in the development of contemporary poetry at the university.

The unique collection feature hundreds of books, photos, pamphlets and recordings. The archives were previously hosted by the Miami University.

The SoundEye Festival of the Arts of the World took place annually from 1997 to 2017 in Cork City. The festival established itself as a leading platform to showcase and celebrate innovative poetry. With a focus on modernism, translation, and the relationship between writing, performance and the visual arts, the festival featured a range of Irish and international readers including Denise Riley, Medbh McGuckian, Ciaran Carson, Maurice Scully and Susan Howe.

The video archive Meshworks was dedicated to documenting and preserving video and sound recordings of writing in performance. Established in 2005 by the English Department of Miami University, it gathered recordings of poetry readings and performances from across the USA and Europe. Among the host of poets featured on Meshworks are Tom Leonard, Kenneth Goldsmith, Fanny Howe, Rae Armantrout and C.S. Giscombe.

Professor Lee Jenkins, UCC School of English, said: “The Department of English is excited that the SoundEye Collection and Archive will be housed in the Boole Library. The Department has been closely involved with the annual SoundEye festival since its inception in 1997: the first events were hosted in UCC, on campus and at the Granary Theatre. The list of poets who performed at SoundEye between 1997 and 2017 amounts to a who’s who of Anglophone modernist poetry.”

“Staff and postgraduate students in the Department of English have written book chapters, articles and PhD theses on the work of the SoundEye poets. Cork’s international reputation as a hub for the performance and study of Anglophone experimental poetics makes the Boole Library the perfect location for a Collection and Archive which will prove a generative and rich resource for future scholarship and creative work,” Professor Jenkins said.

Coral Black, UCC University Librarian, said: “UCC Library sees its acquisition of this substantial collection, associated with Cork's long-running SoundEye Festival, as a unique boost to its resources in the area of Irish and international literary research, and an acknowledgement of the bonds between the university's and the city's cultural heritage.”

The acquisition will be celebrated at a special event in UCC Library on Thursday, 22 February at 5.15pm. The event will celebrate the launch of new books by three celebrated poets - ‘Self-Avoiding Space-Filling Curve’ by Peter Manson; ‘Conspiracy’ by Trevor Joyce and ‘The Electron-Ghost Casino’ by Randolph Healy. There will be short readings by each poet at the launch. More information can be found here.