2021 Creative Arts Fellow for Australian Writing, Dr Jordie Albiston, discusses her research process at the National Library for her new poetry project ‘Frank’.

‘Frank’ comprises of poems based on the diaries of James Francis Hurley from two Antarctic expeditions (under Mawson, and then Shackleton) and his subsequent picture-show tour. Approximately 120 poems offer a poetic mosaic of Hurley's experiences as man and Antarctic photographer, at the end of the heroic age of exploration. Individual diary entries will be redacted to poetry while honouring the unique specificities — vocabulary, rhythm, tone — of Hurley's voice. This transformative shift aims to generate a fresh viability for such documents, enabling a contemporary audience to interact with, and appreciate archival accounts on a completely new range of levels: from the formal and literary level of 'text', to the universal and philosophical level of what it means to be human.

Image: Hurley, Frank (1910), [Frank Hurley photographing from the tip of the jib-boom of the Discovery, Banzare, 1929-1931] [Antarctica], (detail), nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn92416