Introduction
In celebration of National Poetry Month, the Anne Blonstein Association and the Poetry Collection are pleased to present anne blonstein continuing. Curated by Maria Cecilia Holt and Alison Fraser, with additional help from Elizabeth Crummins, student assistant to the Poetry Collection, this digital exhibit is based on materials from the Poetry Collection’s Anne Blonstein Collection. Anne Blonstein (1958-2011) was a British poet and plant geneticist who lived in Basel, Switzerland for most of her life. This exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of the collection and Blonstein’s life and work, including juvenilia such as a gradebook and early composition book; materials related to Blonstein’s doctoral and postdoctoral work in plant genetics; notebooks and diaries documenting her expansive creative life and diverse research interests; manuscripts, notes, and drafts of poems; and her extensive correspondence with other writers, family, and friends.
While her collection reflects Anne Blonstein’s meticulous approach to research and writing, it also illuminates her interest in the possibilities of palimpsest. In her notebooks, autograph drafts of poems are hidden beneath typed fair copies that have been taped onto the page, while notes, clippings, or postcards appear on facing pages, creating layers of excavation. In an email pasted into the blue pearl notebook (2000), she addresses this poetics directly, writing to a friend about reading HD’s Palimpsest before confessing, “I’m palimpsesting myself at the moment…” Palimpsest creates its own record and history, reflecting an archival impulse with which Blonstein was long familiar. In a letter to her mother written in 1982, she wrote, “Re. my papers in the garage—you won’t throw them out will you (I’m sure you won’t), and I promise to look through them when I’m home next, though what I shall do with what I want to keep I’m not sure.” Thanks to the generosity and dedication of friends from the Anne Blonstein Association, Anne Blonstein’s papers are now available for public research and inspiration in the Poetry Collection. anne blonstein continuing offers a warm introduction.
Anne Blonstein Collection finding aid
Fig. 1. Photograph of participants in the Word & Nation Workshop at the Solothurn Symposium, 1996, Carton 6, PCMS-0089, Anne Blonstein Collection, 1975-2011, The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
This photograph, pasted in Anne Blonstein’s diary entry on September 11, 1996, commemorates when Anne Blonstein met Charles Lock at a conference in Solothurn, Switzerland sponsored by the British Council. Anne Blonstein would eventually ask Charles Lock to be her literary executor and Patrick King, her postdoctoral supervisor at Friedrich Meischer-Institut (see Figure 8), to be her executor. Charles Lock appears in the back row at the far right; Anne Blonstein appears in the front row, third in from the left. See Figure 9 for the full page and complete participant identification.
Fig. 2. Pages from Anne Blonstein’s composition notebook, 1964, Carton 15, PCMS-0089, Anne Blonstein Collection, 1975-2011, The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Fig. 3. Opening pages from The Lady Eleanor Holles Senior Report Book, 1975, Carton 15, PCMS-0089, Anne Blonstein Collection, 1975-2011, The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Figs. 4 and 5. Letters from Anne Blonstein to Sheila Blonstein, 1977 and 1982, Carton 2, PCMS-0089, Anne Blonstein Collection, 1975-2011, The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Anne Blonstein’s book correspondence with nobody (ellectrique Press, 2008) was inspired by Sheila Blonstein, her mother.
Fig. 6. University of Cambridge graduation portrait of Anne Blonstein, 1982, Carton 15, PCMS-0089, Anne Blonstein Collection, 1975-2011, The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Fig. 7. Introduction to “Developmental and Genetic Analysis of New Dwarf Mutants in Barley, Hordeum vulgare, and Their Potential for Incorporation into Short Strawed Commercial Varieties,” doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Cambridge in 1982, Carton 10, PCMS-0089, Anne Blonstein Collection, 1975-2011, The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Fig. 8. Anne Blonstein’s letter of application to the Friedrich Meischer-Institut (FMI), 1982, Carton 15, PCMS-0089, Anne Blonstein Collection, 1975-2011, The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Anne Blonstein was formally accepted to the postdoctoral fellowship at the Friedrich Meischer-Institut, under the supervision of Patrick King, on August 25, 1982.
Fig. 9. Pages from Anne Blonstein’s 1996 diary, Carton 6, PCMS-0089, Anne Blonstein Collection, 1975-2011, The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Fig. 10. “Egyptian Magic cont’d.,” from the notebook for the blue pearl, 2000, Carton 10, PCMS-0089, Anne Blonstein Collection, 1975-2011, The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
the blue pearl (Salt Publishing, 2003) was Anne Blonstein’s first book-length poetry publication. One image shows the inserted leaf unfolded, the other shows it closed and turned.
Fig. 11. “Language and Art in the Navajo Universe cont’d.,” from the notebook for the blue pearl, 2000, Carton 10, PCMS-0089, Anne Blonstein Collection, 1975-2011, The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Fig. 12. First page from the notebook A Year of Changes (green cancer notebook), 2008, Carton 11, PCMS-0089, Anne Blonstein Collection, 1975-2011, The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Fig. 13. Pages from the notebook A Year of Changes (green cancer notebook), 2008, Carton 11, PCMS-0089, Anne Blonstein Collection, 1975-2011, The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Fig. 14. “Boulevard,” from the notebook Figo C III (pink cancer notebook), ca. 2009, Carton 11, PCMS-0089, Anne Blonstein Collection, 1975-2011, The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Fig. 15. “chemotherapy day 2.11,” from the notebook Figo C III (pink cancer notebook), ca. 2009, Carton 11, PCMS-0089, Anne Blonstein Collection, 1975-2011, The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
In this notebook, Anne Blonstein taped fair copies of her poems over the handwritten drafts.
Fig. 16. “her skin sings a violet philosophy,” from Mistress of the Crazy Chromosome (yellow cancer notebook), 2009, Carton 11, PCMS-0089, Anne Blonstein Collection, 1975-2011, The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
Anne Blonstein collaborated with the composer Mela Meierhans on a series of works, including canthus to canthus.
Fig. 18. Anne Blonstein in Kannenfeld Park, Basel, Switzerland, 2004. Photograph by Kathrin Schaeppi. Used with permission.
Maria Cecilia Holt has a doctorate from Harvard University’s Divinity School. She has conducted research on the “textuality of textiles” as well as on burial and oratory, both in early Christianity and in anthropological accounts of indigenous funeral traditions in Southeast Asia. Holt’s work in organizing Anne Blonstein’s archive began in 2017. By this time, she had worked with John Uecker (James Purdy’s literary executor and last assistant to Tennessee Williams) to facilitate the transfer of significant materials and drafts connected with Tennessee Williams’s last play—In Masks Outrageous and Austere—to Harvard’s Houghton Library (2015). Together with Charles Lock, Holt also worked with Uecker to bury James Purdy’s ashes according to the late writer’s wishes—near to the grave of Dame Edith Sitwell at Weedon Lois, Northamptonshire, UK. Holt’s account of Purdy’s burial was published in the European Journal of Life Writing in 2020.