Accession MS COLL 00127H - Robert Stacey Papers

33 boxes (3.8 metres); 17 photographs; 7 negatives

Series consists of holograph, typescript and word processed poetry. Though he was well-regarded in his lifetime as a leading expert on Canadian art, Stacey also wrote extensive amounts of poetry for several decades. This was largely done in private; his efforts in this area were a little known fact, even among close friends. Frequent switching from type to handwriting, from pencil to pen of different coloured inks, continuation of a work on different sizes of paper, indicate that wrote most of his poems in multiple sittings, in multiple locations, using whatever materials were at hand when the feeling took him. As a medium, poetry appears to have served Stacey’s inclination to play with language, a preference for description over narrative, adjective and adverb over noun and verb. Despite producing a prodigious amount of it, Stacey never published any of his poetry, on the whole, appearing to have written it primarily for his own pleasure. However, as evidenced by several items of correspondence and personal writing, as well as Stacey’s frequent editing of his poems and organizing of this material into possible collections (see Series 2), he did have some thought to publishing. Titles for poems, in many instances, are taken from first lines. Several items are written under the pen names “George Roberts” and “G.H. Roberts.”

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