My talk with the lovely Kate Feld is here: Manchester Literary Festival.
Earlier this year during the Festival of Libraries, I was lucky enough to be part of the Manchester City of Literature and Manchester Literature Festival virtual writer residency alongside French-American-Hungarian writer and journalist Anna Polonyi. Anna was partnered with Central Library to create a short story while I have been researching in the Portico Library to write a suite of poems. Exploring the books and surrounds of a library in Manchester while I am in the confines of Melbourne was both exciting and challenging so I was grateful to be guided by Portico Library’s librarian and CEO, Dr Thom Keep.
Wanting to capture ‘time-capsules’ of what someone might be reading in the mid-nineteenth century, I was drawn to the science books of the day to better understand how a reader in Manchester would see themselves placed within the greater cosmos. On hearing about the ‘Strangers Books’, two 19th century logbooks discovered by the Portico Library of transitory visitors to the space, I imagined what it would be like to walk into the library, even for a day, and sit down to read a book off their shelves. The ‘Strangers Books’ records are from the 1830s to the 1850s but I wanted to highlight a lengthier period — to the 1880s — so the mix of books I researched covered a span of 70 years. During this time, women were not allowed to be members or even visit but I knew their work was amongst the words of Laplace, Faraday or Maxwell. There were so many books to choose from the rich and essential collection.
A plate from 'The Moon: Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite', 1874 by James Nasmyth & James Carpenter.