Through the Door

Your chance to be involved in Archives for London and Poets in Residence new ventures for 2011.

Many institutions have hosted a visiting artist in recent years, offering the chance to explore what they do as a way of providing creative inspiration and producing new work.

Now Archives for London Ltd is discussing teaming up with Poet in the City to put together a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for between six to eight archives in the Greater London area to act as host to a visiting poet.

Poet in the City, one of the UK’s leading poetry charities, is committed to promoting poetry to new audiences and making new connections for poetry. With over 4,000 members in London and the South East, where it holds about 25 high profile poetry events every year, it also tours poetry shows and delivers schools placements all over the UK. On average about 25% of its audiences are attending their first ever poetry event. In each of the last 3 years Poet in the City has also been responsible for poetry commissions involving some of the UK’s most acclaimed contemporary poets. This work has been widely published, re-printed and performed.  

Poet in the City will commission 6-8 contemporary poets for the Through the Door project, carefully matching poets to archives which will interest or challenge them. Each poet will be able to draw on source material and on the ambience of the archive to which they are assigned, in order to compose stimulating original work, reflecting on the topic of the archive and appealing to geographic audiences who use the archive, or could be attracted to using it.  Ideally the Archive institutions would come from all parts of London, including inner and outer London boroughs, and will include some of the capital’s wide range of specialist repositories. Project work would also take place in local schools.