| Description | This collection of literary and personal papers contains: five boxes of personal correspondence. Two contain correspondence mainly between John Fairfax and John Moat 1976-1991; the others hold personal correspondence from a broad group of writers (handlist available), including some extra material from John Fairfax.
There are also three boxes of literary manuscripts, papers and drawings, including manuscript and typescript rough drafts, reworkings and fine copies of poems; jotters containing diary notes (mainly taken whilst abroad), sketches and dream diary notes, prose jottings and forming notes; sketch pads (mainly from travels abroad) with some verse accompanying images 1950s-1990s (handlist not yet available).
An additional deposit, of the literary manuscripts, papers and drawings for the book 'Hermes & Magdalen' and a limited edition of 'Hermes & Magdalen', with a complete loose-leaf set of the etchings, was made in 2005.
Xerox typescripts of poems ('10 Overtures') recently reworked for publication were deposited in 2006.
Additional purchases and deposits since 2006 include a second deposit of letters (2009), one copy of the manuscript 'Episola' and two boxes of notebooks and papers in 2012 (handlist available). Three small sets of papers relating to projects and committees (2015): the South West Arts Literature Advisory Panel (1975), "That Teacher" project (a development from the Tandem project) 2007-8, the Tandem Project - an initiative to create a programme of creative opportunities and courses and workshops for teachers, with a pilot project run at Arvon 1997-2002. Also John Moat 'Adam and the miraculous mandarin and a selection from the sequence Hermes and Magdalen' |
| Admin History | John Moat (1936-2014) was a writer and artist based in Devon since the age of two, although he was born in India. He spent a year as a painter in France at the age of eighteen, working with the artist Edmond Kapp, before reading English Literature at Oxford University. On graduating, he taught for four years in order to support his writing career, and then turned to writing full-time.
Together with his life-long friend and fellow poet John Fairfax, he was the co-founder of the Arvon Foundation, which is now one of the UK's foremost creative writing establishments. The first week-long creative writing course was held for Devon schoolchildren in 1968, with Ted Hughes (Poet Laureate) attending as guest reader. The Foundation now runs residential creative writing courses at four centres throughout the United Kingdom.
Moat was a broadcaster and teacher, and he also illustrated his own books, having gradually resumed painting from the age of thirty. He wrote a column for the leading international 'alternatives' magazine Resurgence for twenty-five years. His writing earned him the Frances Stelloff Award, the TSW/SWA Video Poem Competition and a shortlisting for the Guardian Children's Fiction Award. He was a founder trustee of the Yarner Trust (concerned with training for organic smallholders), founded Tandem (a teachers and artists alliance) in 1998, and was also director of the Environmental Research Association.
Some of the prose (novel and short-story) publications of John Moat include: 'Bartonwood', 'Heorot', 'Mai's Wedding', 'The Missing Moon' (first published as 'The Tugen and the Toot') and 'Rain and other stories'. Poetry publications include: 'Skeleton Key', '6d per annum', '100 poems', 'Firewater' and The Miraculous Mandarin', 'Practice', 'The Ballad of the Leat', 'Thunder of Grass', 'Fiesta and The Fox Reviews his Prophecy', and 'The Welcombe Overtures', 'Hermes and Magdalen'. His final work, entitled 'Anyway' was published just before he died in September 2014. |