I met a couple of archivists from the BL at some kind of launch and mentioned that I had a small collection of cassettes recording poetry readings in London. I was anxious that they were decaying and asked advice about what I could do with them. They said that the BL would be interested in them for their sound archive and that the BL could digitize them. The British Library has quite a large collection of Cobbing recordings already. They were also interested in the Allen Fisher and Mottram recordings.
It also meant that I could free up some shelf space.
I spent some tome recently in the Eric Mottram archive at King's College, London. Eric recorded every reading he went to - and also a lot of his teaching. There are some 800 cassettes. These have been catalogued by Valerie Soares and will be digitized shortly.
Yours,
Robert
-----Original Message-----
From: British & Irish poets [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Lace
Sent: 30 August 2016 12:59
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Have any of you prepared for posthumous recognition?
Robert, what prompted you to donate your cassettes? Did you see something of significance in their content?
-----------------------------Original Message--------------------------------
Robert Hampson wrote:
I gave my own cassettes of recordings of poetry readings to the British Library: they have digitized them, and they are now available through the catalogue.
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