What’s your favourite?

Typewriter, Olivetti Lettera 25 - from shop in Glasgow; typewritten note - photographer's own

Things are hotting up, Edwin Morgan style, in the SPL! Some of you may know about our Edwin Morgan Archive – full of wonderful, varied items collected by EM’s friend and editor Hamish Whyte. The formal opening of the archive is fast approaching, tying in with EM’s birthday and the launch of our exhibition, Bawr Stretter! Messages from a poet, so there’s much excitement in the SPL.

Proofs of our splendid booklet about the archive have been squinted at, shuffled and signed off. This fabulous new typewriter, EM’s preferred mode of communication, has been acquired for the leaving of thoughts on the archive, and we’ve been indulging in conversations about what kind of cake we should have – EM favours chocolate cake, but is partial to jaffa cakes too.

We hope you’ll visit once the archive is formally open, but you can help us before that too. We embarked upon a hunt to find the nation’s favourite Edwin Morgan poem, and there’s some of you we’ve still not heard from. This is an ongoing project, but the current frontrunner will become a poster in the Glasgow Subway. So vote now! Please do spread the word about our search and encourage others – we’d love it to contain as many multitudes as the man himself.

Delivery and message from the basement!

This morning we took delivery of the biggest box I’ve ever seen. If you took the trouble to cut a door in it, a couple and their three children could have lived comfortably inside! Well, perhaps not. But it was so large it wouldn’t fit through the door. We stood around mystified: our new photocopier? A washing machine gone awry down Crichton’s Close? Once some of the outer swaddling had been dispensed, and it was manhandled safely in, we discovered it to contain special storage boxes for our Edwin Morgan Archive.

Meet Lisa, SPL’s Edwin Morgan archivist:

“H. Another complimentary – for your archives! E. 7-8-1985.” –  from Edwin Morgan to his friend Hamish Whyte inscribed in A Second Scottish Poetry Book and just one example of the range of materials that now make up the Edwin Morgan Archive which I am cataloguing at the SPL.

Books, of course, make up a majority of the items, which is unusual since an archive usually consists of unpublished materials. It’s the inscriptions however, by Morgan, and the accompanying correspondence that makes these published works unique. It’s far from  just a collection of poetry: it also comprises works of fiction from his personal library or works that he contributed to, including the Celebrity Cookbook to which he added a recipe for fish and chips!

The materials in this special collection also include journals, newspapers, audio and video files, posters, ephemera, and even Morgan’s desk and typewriter. I even get to sit at his desk and work but I think I will stick to using a computer and not his typewriter…

An admiring welcome for Edwin Morgan's Bluebird typewriter from Lizzie, Julie and Jane