Episode Overview
Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Dr. Theresa Muñoz
Episode: "Archivum" (Pavilion Poetry at Liverpool UP, 2025)
Date: October 29, 2025
This episode features a wide-ranging conversation between Dr. Miranda Melcher and poet Theresa Muñoz about Muñoz's new poetry collection, Archivum. The discussion explores archival research as both inspiration and subject, the personal and collective resonances of archives, dealing with legacy, lost voices, and the interplay between nostalgia, regret, and possibility in memory work.
Main Themes and Purpose
- Expanding the Concept of Archives: The episode examines how archives are not just repositories of history, but living reservoirs of memories, emotion, regret, and discovery—resources both critical and deeply personal.
- The Poetics of Preservation and Loss: Muñoz reflects on what is found and absent in archives, drawing connections to identity, legacy, and hidden voices—especially those from marginalized relationships or backgrounds.
- Bringing Archives to Life: Through poetry, Muñoz animates artifacts and documents, relating them back to her own life and wider experiences, prompting broader reflection on collective memory.
- Influence of Place and Relationships: The collection is rooted in Edinburgh’s landscapes, intertwined with explorations of writers like Muriel Spark, and draws from Muñoz’s own multi-cultural, migratory background.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Genesis of Archivum
[02:31]
- Theresa Muñoz’s Background: Canadian-born, now based in Scotland; poet and academic drawn to archives during a postdoctoral project at Newcastle University.
- Inspiration: The Bloodaxe Books archive sparked her interest in the surprises and emotional resonances objects in boxes can evoke.
- Motivation: The key question became—what do curated archives bring up in ourselves?
"What can be found in boxes and what surprises us... what we find in archives curated by someone else—what does that bring up in ourselves?"
—Theresa Muñoz [03:12]
2. Skills and Mindsets Developed in Archives
[04:47]
- Expectation vs. Reality: The archive teaches humility; what you expect and what you find can be very different.
- Documentation: Diligent note-taking and immersive attention to detail (e.g., salutations in letters) are crucial.
- Personal Resonance: The process is about relating found materials to contemporary personal life and broader human circumstances.
"You have to take what's in the box outside of the box—not just physically, but into your own life."
—Theresa Muñoz [05:52]
3. Regret and Loss in Archives
[07:18]
- Emotion Manifested: Feelings such as regret become visible through registers of corrected entries—official records that document changes (divorce, paternity, etc.) and, by extension, regret or disappointment.
- Retrospective Reading: Objects in archives invite a kind of “looking back” that can highlight what was lost or unfulfilled.
"To me, that was like a book of what some might feel is regret... it was a book of mistakes. So archives can kind of point that out because you're looking at them in hindsight."
—Theresa Muñoz [08:26]
4. Forward-Looking Moments: "The Handover"
[10:15]
- Rituals and Exchange: The physical handover of archival folders sparks anticipation and represents trust, continuity, and the “reverse” life chronology preserved in documents.
- Poem Reading: “The Handover” (see transcript for full text) encapsulates this ritual, with tactile details and meditations on reading the record of a life in reverse.
"It's the Handover, the invisible ripple from the attendant's hand to mine, our mutual swapping that inspires my step..."
—Theresa Muñoz, reading "The Handover" [11:15]
5. Influence of Muriel Spark's Archives
[12:56]
- Legacy and Process: Spark’s archive offered a complete arc, letting Muñoz explore both Spark’s public and private personas, from everyday diaries to curated sets.
- Curation and Performance: Acknowledges Spark’s intentional shaping of her own archive, including both mundane and revealing personal details.
- Challenging Moments: Letters from male fan groups display early forms of what would now be called ‘trolling.’
"The Muriel Spark archives... start from when she wasn't a writer to when she was very celebrated. They really gave me a sense of an arc of the writer's life."
—Theresa Muñoz [13:47]
6. Famous Advice—Going to Paris
[17:08]
- Paris as Escapism: Spark's quip about going to Paris after trouble is decoded as both tongue-in-cheek and genuinely advocating escape, renewal, and excitement.
- Personal Resonance: Muñoz herself spent time in Paris on a fellowship and testifies to its invigorating effect.
"It was just a way... of making sure you have excitement in your life... a sense of escapism."
—Theresa Muñoz [17:48]
7. Comparing Lives—Finding Common Ground
[19:50]
- "Footnotes Comparing Muriel and I": A late addition, this poem lists parallels and disconnections between Muñoz’s and Spark’s lives, especially as women writers negotiating ambition and sacrifice.
- Personalization of the Archive: This poem highlights the need to connect oneself to objects and lives in the archive, deepening their meaning.
"I thought there has to be something that puts me in the same boat as her. And it was really about the struggle to be a woman writer..."
—Theresa Muñoz [20:12]
8. Sequencing and Structure: Making the Collection Whole
[22:38]
- Reorganization: Poems were initially grouped by theme but intermixed to create connections and a unified experience.
- Editorial Process: Feedback from editor Deryn Rees-Jones was key to restructuring the book.
9. Archives, Memory, and the Digital Age
[24:36]
- From Letters to Pixels: Muñoz laments the loss of intimacy and uniqueness in objects as communication becomes digital; wonders how future archives will be constructed and curated.
- Personal Archive Aspirations: She keeps notes, manuscripts, transcripts—hoping to preserve traces for herself and possible future curiosity.
"You actually have to curate your own archive now in this age, if you want it to happen..."
—Theresa Muñoz [26:18]
10. Hidden and Lost Voices
[27:00]
- Interracial Relationships and Marginality: The search for evidence of mixed-race lives in Scottish archives, often under-recorded or missing, becomes a focal point.
- Examples: Eliza Jnr’s story as one such nearly-vanished voice, and the UK's first Black psychoanalyst.
- Link to Decolonization: The collection redresses archival silences—especially around indigenous and minority experiences.
"I wanted some of the poems to talk about the lost voices in the archive."
—Theresa Muñoz [28:41]
11. Everyday Objects and Preservation
[30:41]
- Recipe for Jam: A 17th-century recipe becomes a meditation on preservation, time, and care—connecting past and present through the ordinary.
- Childhood Relics: Items like childhood books and indigenous artifacts in Scottish museums become poignant anchors for poems.
12. What Readers Might Take Away
[33:27]
- Expanded View of Archives: Archives are everywhere and alive; personal and bodily memories are archival.
- Memory, Legacy, and Comfort: Objects comfort the living after loss, and prompt reflection on how we are remembered.
- Possibility: Archives always balance looking back and forward—there is endless discovery and surprise.
"I just wanted to impart that feeling that archives are a way for us to preserve what we had, but it's also a way of looking forward and a way of looking back. There's just so much possibility there."
—Theresa Muñoz [35:08]
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
-
"The element of surprise and discovery...balances what we think of archives. The body is like an archive, the way we store memories and trauma."
—Theresa Muñoz [33:52] -
"It's a mix of both. People really are comforted by these objects when someone passes away."
—Theresa Muñoz [34:53] -
"If you are migrant, you don't live one linear life, you live many lives because they're still continuing in the different places that you live."
—Theresa Muñoz [36:24]
(On migration and her forthcoming work)
Timestamps for Key Segments
- 02:31 — How Muñoz got into archives and poetry
- 04:47 — Skills and mindsets developed in archival work
- 07:18 — Finding regret and loss in archival objects
- 10:15 — “The Handover” poem and rituals of research
- 12:56 — Muriel Spark’s archives and legacy
- 17:08 — Muriel Spark’s Parisian advice decoded
- 19:50 — "Footnotes Comparing Muriel and I": Identity and relation
- 22:38 — Structure and sequencing of the collection
- 24:36 — Impact of digitalization on personal archives
- 27:00 — Hidden voices and erasures in the Scottish archival record
- 30:41 — Everyday objects as entry points—jam recipe, toys, artifacts
- 33:27 — What archives offer to readers and memory
- 35:39 — Sneak peek at Muñoz’s next project on migration and goodbyes
Takeaways & Closing
Theresa Muñoz’s Archivum opens up the archive not just as a store of artifacts, but as a site for emotional resonance, social critique, and creative renewal. This conversation makes clear that archives live in the objects we keep, the stories we tell, and in the act of writing and remembering itself.
For listeners, the episode is both an invitation to reconsider the role of archives in our own lives and a testament to the richness available when we linger with the past to illuminate our present.