Life from Within: Poems by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Introduction

By Dr. Erin Presley and Brandi Bowlin

Dr. Erin Presley:

Several years ago, Special Collections Librarian Debbie Whalen mentioned that Eastern Kentucky University had manuscript poems by Elizabeth Madox Roberts in the papers of John Wilson Townsend. As an advocate for authentic learning experiences, I started dreaming about how I could engage students with this collection. Around the same time, EKU began an Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative through our Library, and several colleagues started creating open-access textbooks. By collaborating with librarians in the archives and for OER development, I could engage graduate students with these neglected materials through the creation of an accessible resource.

In addition to engaging students with hands-on archival and publishing work, this project also introduces Elizabeth Madox Roberts to a new audience. Roberts was born in Perryville, Kentucky in 1881 and considered Springfield, Kentucky home until her death in 1941. Despite chronic health issues, Roberts was able to graduate from the University of Chicago and published prolifically in the 1920s and 1930s. Her contemporaries and predecessors, including Sherwood Anderson and Robert Penn Warren, admired her work, and two of her novels, The Time of Man and The Great Meadow, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. While popular and critically acclaimed during her career, Roberts is rarely taught in literature courses today. Recovering Roberts and her work for future readers has been a meaningful experience for both the students and instructor, and I am thrilled that this collection is freely available to the public. 

PA61M281: Elizabeth Madox Roberts, undated, Collection on Elizabeth Madox Roberts, University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center.  Used with permission from UK Archives.

Brandi Bowlin:

To say that this project was authentic and engaging is quite an understatement. We took Dr. Presley’s dream and brought it to life, but we couldn’t have accomplished this without her continuous support and encouragement and allowing us to take this project over and make it completely our own. We began the semester by reading about archival work, open pedagogy, and open educational resources to inform our approach but quickly shifted our focus to Roberts. We read her novel Time of Man, a short story entitled “On the Mountainside,” and a selection of poetry outside this collection. We noticed prevalent themes of nature and Appalachian life in her work and kept these perspectives in mind when drafting our analyses, which we started about two weeks before the midterm. Our readings of Roberts’ work cultivated a deeper understanding and appreciation of Appalachian heritage and the importance of voice in an author’s writing.

This project allowed us to explore previously unpublished work from an underrepresented demographic of writers—Appalachian women. We appreciated the opportunity to engage with these materials and put them together in such a meaningful way. Working with Roberts’ poetry allowed us to explore our own voices through poetry analysis. As graduate students of English and Writing, we love poetry and literature! We loved the processes of drafting and redrafting, working in the archives, collaborating on different parts of the project (as well as taking care of our individual roles), constantly checking in with each other via group chats, recording the audio, designing the layout, and everything else. We also loved the chance to connect with Appalachian heritage—all but one of us are from the region, and even she (from the outskirts, a very close neighbor) felt a deeper connection to Appalachia because of this course and project. I hope our readers can gain a sense of that same connection through the poetry of Elizabeth Madox Roberts. We are proud to present her work as a permanent and open educational resource, one that we have worked hard on for an entire semester, and we hope that it will reach a broader audience than ever before, gaining some of the literary attention that Roberts deserves.

Essay Audio