Ulster Poetry in the Digital Age: Creativity, Innovation and Professional Practice

1. Ulster Poetry in the Digital Age: Creativity, Innovation and Professional Practice Dr Kathryn White and Dr Frank Ferguson

2. TEACHING AND LEARNING

3. “Employing digital technology can really benefit students and scholars, especially when they’re not getting too caught up with a particular gizmo as such, using it just to use it. Instead, it’s a question of how technology can both aid in traditional modes of scholarship/study and create new ways of approaching it.”  Dr. Trevor Hoag, Assistant Professor of English and a member of the CNU Digital Humanities Task Force http://www.thecaptainslog.org/2014/news/cnu-advances-towards-digital-humanities-minor/

4. QUESTION: How do we make poetry relevant, accessible and exciting in the digital age?

5. UNLOCKING THE ARCHIVE

6. What is an archive? ‘the meaning of "archive“, its only meaning, comes to it from the Greek arkheion: initially a house, a domicile, an address, the residence of the superior magistrates, the archons, those who commanded ...’ ‘Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression’ Jacques Derrida and Eric Prenowitz, Diacritics, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer, 1995), pp. 9-63

7. Archives play a significant role in cultural and social history The selection/deselection of archival material shapes public memory for better or for worse History influences archival practice and theory, which in turn influences further history

8. Role of Archives • as memory keepers • as instruments of transparency and accountability • for retaining corporate knowledge • for informing future decision making

9. John Hewitt Collection: University of Ulster, Coleraine

12. How Academia Is Interpreting Archives

13. DIGITAL ARCHIVES/ IMPACT

14. Poetry Archive ‘unacknowledged legislators’

15. Ulster Poetry Project • Celebration of the Work and Scholarship of John Hewitt and Ulster-Scots Poetry. • Ongoing research in Ulster Poetry and Book History. • Collaboration with UU, Libraries NI, QUB, LHL. • 5000 books and journals of John Hewitt’s Library; 40 manuscript notebooks of poems, unpublished autobiography ‘A North Light’.

16. Teaching a buried archive And while they’re provin’ that his end is sure By strange ill omens—to assuage his smart The minister comes in, wha’s to the poor, Without a fee performs the doctor’s part: An’ while wi’ hope he soothes the suff’rers heart, An’ gies a cheap, safe recipe, they try To quat braid Scotch, a task that foils their art; For while they join his converse, vain though shy, They monie a lang learn’d word misca’ an’ misapply. (The Irish Cottier’s Death and Burial. James Orr)

19. Resource For Secondary and Higher Education

20. QAA – Subject-Specific Skills • awareness of how different social and cultural contexts affect the nature of language and meaning • understanding of how cultural norms and assumptions influence questions of judgement • comprehension of the complex nature of literary languages, and an awareness of the relevant research by which they may be better understood.

21. Unlocking the database

22. EXHIBITIONS

23. Television Production

24. Research as Teaching Resource

25. New Publications

26. DIGITAL ARCHAEOLOGY • Employability Improving employability skills for students • Teaching and Learning Developing and implementing a broad range of flexible learning approaches • Learning Resources Developing clearer and more effective resource strategies; enabling better access to learning resources for all students; developing the use of collections to support effective teaching and learning

27. Next Steps