Browse Exhibits (5 total)
Sounding the Name and The Poets Mother
This exhibit contains documents contained in the Archives and Special Collections at the University of Calgary, regarding Robert Kroetsch's poems: Sounding the Name, and The Poets Mother.
The following materials are drafts from Robert Kroetsch's poems, including two photographs that helped to inspire his writing.
The textual images give insight into what the full extent of what Kroetsch's archive looks like, as well as Kroetsch's writing process. The textual pages also include many handwritten notes and annotations in the writers own handwriting.
The Ledger
This exhibit contains material from the Robert Kroetsch file found at the University of Calgary's Archives and Special Collections. The materials include drafts from Kroetsch's 1975 long poem, The Ledger.
This exhibit presents a selection of materials that demonstrate Robert Kroetsch's creative process when writing The Ledger.
Excerpts From The Real World July
The exhibit contains materials from the Archives and Special Collection in the University of Calgary. The materials include Robert Kroetsch's drafts and work on his poem, "Excerpts From The Real World".
In the exhibit, you will be able to see changes throughout the draft, which pinpoints towards Kroetsch's thought process.
There are also pieces of papers, typed and written, letters, and small notes with writing on them.
These items were chosen to demonstrate the variant forms of a single element of poetry that can be found within the Kroetsch archive. By demonstrating the progress of a single passage, from an initial idea handwritten on an envelope, through hand written pages, and those typed both on lined and unlined paper, we hope to give insight into the creative process of Kroetsch's writing.
Letters to Salonika, June 26th
This digital exhibit presents materials housed in the Robert Kroetsch archives at the University of Calgary’s Archives and Special Collections. The materials surround letters he wrote to his lover while she was in Greece. These specific pages were written reflecting on her absence on the poet’s birthday, June 26, 1981. The exhibit consists of two typescript versions of Kroetsch's epistolary poem "Letters to Salonika", the first four pages consist of the letter, while the final presents the published poetic materials regarding the same event.
Seed Catalog, Section 7
The images shown here are typescript drafts, with holographic annotation, of Section 7 from Kroetsch’s long poem “Seed Catalogue.” These drafts were chosen with the intent of exhibiting a formally interesting section of this particular archive in its entirety, in order to allow for convenient genetic study of a contained unit. Section 7 of the published poem is interesting for its extrapolation on the poem’s repeated phrase “how do you grow a poet?” unique formal variations, and references to other Canadian literary figures (Kroetsch’s colleagues), such as Al Purdy and James Bacque. Several lines appear in these drafts that do not appear in the published poem, and others are moved out of section 7 to different locations in the published work. Interesting to note as well are the small edits made throughout with attention to word choice and altered tone. Comparative study of these drafts with the published sections of the poem will allow for insights into the relationship between the poem’s structure and content.