My work on a critical edition of Miriam Waddington’s collected poetry continues.
My draft manuscript includes all previously published poems and I am now working on Waddington’s previously unpublished poems. Melissa Dalgleish has joined the project as Research Assistant and is helping with this stage of the project. Currently, she is comparing photocopies of manuscript and typescript poems (the originals are housed in the Miriam Waddington fonds at Library and Archives Canada) with the draft manuscript to determine whether any of the material was actually published. I will be making a final research trip to LAC at the end of March 2011 to collect the remaining unpublished material for further comparison.
Concurrently, I am working on the apparatus (both print and digital) that will complete my edition. Presently, I am rereading the poems with a view to annotation. I am also finalizing the choice of supplementary texts that will form the digital apparatus. The data base of revisions, prepared by Catherine Jenkins, is nearly complete.
I hope, over the course of this Spring and Summer, to complete my work on this project, which is scheduled for publication in 2012 by University of Ottawa Press. I hope my edition will unveil the depth and range of Miriam Waddington’s poetry and introduce her work to a new generation of readers.
Congrats, Ruth, on the progress on your project. As the editor of another underrated modernist and contemporary of Waddington, Eli Mandel, I feel an affinity with your type of work. Best of luck as you continue.
Thanks so much, Peter. Congratulations to you, as well, on the Mandel book. If our editions bring these poets into the classroom and the minds of new readers, we will have done our job as editors.