The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette

Networks, archives and circularity in creative production

This paper references the writing of the Australia Council funded verse novel The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette and the additional print folio created as a practical example of using formal and informal archives and the extent that places, people, and material form enabling networks for the production of new work. Because I trained as a visual artist rather than as a writer, I find it very difficult to confine myself to working solely in one medium. Archival material is not merely stored as a static and revered object but is capable of becoming mobilised and motivated by use, and to affect the practice of the artist/writer through ideas, travel and social contacts. The archive grows through the networks it assumes with the past and new material created from it, showing the circularity of creative production around archival material and its sites.