Cavan McCarthy Archive

Written by Sophie Bouckaert, UCL Archives and Records Management programme.

As part of the Curation and Stewardship module of the UCL Archives and Records Management module, students have the good fortune to be able to choose between many fabulous institutions for a 2 week work placement. I chose to spend my two weeks with UCL Special Collections as I had already been exposed to some of the great people working in UCL Special Collections and the rich and varied materials they work with through teaching sessions delivered as part of the course. I was also keen to broaden my experience of working in different archival environments, and had no previous experience of working within a higher education institution.

I was intrigued and a little apprehensive when Katy emailed to let me know I would be working with archive related to Tlaloc, an experimental poetry magazine published in the 1960s and 1970s. My task would be to sort, list and catalogue these archive materials to improve their accessibility, but given my limited familiarity with poetry – and especially experimental forms of poetry – would I even be able to identify what I was looking at?

Some preliminary research revealed that Tlaloc was a small press magazine with an emphasis on concrete and visual poetry, that is, poetry in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance; or, as John J Sharkey (one of the poets contributing to Tlaloc) put it: “The essence of a poem is inferred through a simple language pattern without necessarily having to ‘read’ it.” (John Sharkey, 1971, p.9)

Tlaloc was edited by Cavan McCarthy, a poet and librarian at the Brotherton Library in Leeds. First issued in 1964, and running to 22 issues by the time it wrapped up 1970, Tlaloc was born at almost precisely the same time as UCL’s collection of Little Magazines. It featured the work of many of the key players of the British literary avant-garde, including Benedictine priest dom sylvester houedard, Scottish poet and artist Ian Hamilton Finlay, pioneering sound and visual poet Bob Cobbing and Angela Carter, English poet and writer known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. McCarthy was also the European editor for the Directory of Little Magazines and the Small Press Review, as well as producing his own Loc-Sheet newsletter. As such, he had an extensive literary and publishing network of connections into which UCL’s English Librarian at the time Geoffrey Soar was able to tap – with the result that UCL’s collection now contains this archive alongside countless rare items published by poets, artists and small collectives from around the world.

The archive itself came in the form of 5 boxes labelled “Tlaloc Files” each containing folders already labelled by Cavan McCarthy – ranging from record copies of his publications, original submissions to Tlaloc from over 100 poets and artists around the world, correspondence with writers, publishers and distributors, drafts of McCarthy’s own poetry and writing, as well as his own collection of Little Magazines published by other imprints. Despite the labelling of the of the boxes, it was clear that the materials they contained were much broader than Tlaloc and so, in discussion with Katy, I sought to develop a cataloguing structure that would make that evident to future users, while maintaining the prominence of Tlaloc and the context that had been provided by McCarthy. Thus the McCarthy Collection was born!

Much of the material was in the form of loose printed or manuscript sheets, and largely produced using the cheap and low quality materials common to the Small Press of the 1960s and 1970s. It was nevertheless in reasonably good condition, perhaps in part due to the limited access and use it has seen to date given its uncatalogued status. That was something my work would hopefully change, making details about the collection publicly available and searchable – but, before that, it would need some re-packaging into archive standard files, folders and boxes to ensure it could continue to be accessible to users for many years to come.

The work I was able to complete on this collection was eye-opening. I learned so much about UCL’s amazing Small Press collections, notable figures in the experimental poetry field and some of the challenges facing publishers and distributors at this time – many of McCarthy’s own writings focused on censorship and obscenity prosecutions undertaken during this period to limit the development of the field and suppress counter-cultural movements. Beyond that, I loved engaging with the various Special Collections teams from digitisation to outreach, conservation to reader services – thank you to all those who supported me through my work placement!

 

Sophie’s catalogue of the McCarthy archive can be found online here: https://archives.ucl.ac.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=MCCARTHY&pos=1