Archivum - (Pavilion Poetry) by Theresa Muñoz (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Archivum is a book - wise, funny and inventive by turn - that explores what it means to look at artefacts in an archive, and how these objects resonate with events in our lives. Imagined as a walk across Edinburgh, landmarks such as the Balmoral clock, National Library of Scotland, Meadows, Canongate Kirkyard and Water of Leith provide a meditative backdrop to the poems.

The archives - in particular the archive of the writer Muriel Spark - are used to create a space to come to terms with the complexities of a life and how we in turn tell stories about ourselves: the depths of our familial relationships, relationship breakdowns and the death of a parent. What's found in the archive's boxes -- including recipes, telegrams, letters -- stirs and amplifies feelings of belonging, disorientation, triumph and grief.

With a focus on women writers and interracial relationships, the book explores objects belonging to significant figures in the poet's imaginary: along with Spark, the actor Maggie Smith, poet Elizabeth Bishop, the 19th century slave owner's daughter Eliza Junor and psychotherapist Marie Battle Singer.

Review Quotes

'Archivum is a work of encounter, an electric exploration of the spaces between self and artefact, self and city, self and history. Within its pages, the dead are bid to speak and the author is transformed by the exchange. Muñoz's work is restless, kind, careful and deftly attuned to poetry's power to make and re-make us; to the moment 'when the secret is heavy yet light, becomes actual light / and you can't stop thinking about it'

Sinéad Morrissey

'Theresa Muñoz brings an immediacy to the stories an archive can tell, making them speak to us here, now. 'Be worthy of this journey', she says as she sets out, and the journey she takes us on is full of unexpected turns, the 'snarl of what now'. She takes the reader with her into the wealth of encounters and human connections to be found in 'paper gestures'. This is Archive as a buzzing, funny sweep of life, or many lives, told with pleasure in language and its unfolding gifts.'

Imtiaz Dharker