| Description | Personal Archive of Cavan McCarthy, poet and publisher of Little Magazines. McCarthy operated under the imprint 'Location Press', the most notable publication of which was Tlaloc, a Little Magazine with an emphasis on visual and concrete poetry active between 1964 and 1970. His personal archive includes record copies of Tlaloc and other publications of Location Press, alongside McCarthy's working files as a publisher and poet, and his personal collection of Little Magazines. |
| AdminHistory | Cavan McCarthy, a poet and librarian at the Brotherton Library in Leeds, edited Tlaloc, a Little Magazine with an emphasis on concrete and visual poetry. First issued in December 1964, the launch of Tlaloc coincided with the birth of UCL’s collection of Little Magazines. It featured the work of many of the key players of the British literary avant-garde (e.g. dom sylvester houedard, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Bob Cobbing and Angela Carter) as well as that of some from further afield (e.g. Canadians George Bowering, Earle Birney and Lionel Kearns, Czech Jiri Valoch, Finn Anselm Hollo and American d.a.levy). 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 network of connections into which UCL's English Librarian Geoffrey Soar was able to tap – with the result that UCL’s collection now contains countless rare items published by poets, artists and small collectives from around the world. Tlaloc is referred to by McCarthy as ‘a librarian’s nightmare’ due to its changing format and loose inserts, but it is typical of many of the collection’s titles from this period. Such was his regard for McCarthy and his magazine that Soar eventually purchased from him this archive of publications, original artwork, layouts and correspondence. The original labelling and arrangement of this archive, apparently undertaken by McCarthy, is referred to throughout the catalogue. |