Article
Archival poetics: Writing history from the fragments
TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Programs
(2015)
Abstract
This paper examines ‘archival poetics’ in contemporary history and fiction writing,
with a focus on Mark McKenna’s An eye for eternity: The life of Manning Clark,
Megan Marshall’s Margaret Fuller: A new American life and Kim Scott’s Benang,
from the heart. It investigates the ways in which the authors of these works move away
from the forensic imaginary embodied in a certain kind of historiography’s approach to
the archive, to create a more personal, powerful and situated kind of history writing. It
argues that these works suggest that history is less about the sublime chaos of the past –
which cannot be narrated without duplicity, damage or violence – than how we engage
the past, which is, on reflection, an entirely different thing.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2015
Citation Information
Nelson, C. (2015). Archival poetics: Writing history from the fragments. TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Programs, 28.