I am sad to
have heard this morning officially of the death of Geoffrey Soar from his wife
Valerie, though I had picked up the news in one of Lawrence Upton’s updates, and I find Ken
Edwards has posted a remark on Facebook. He had been ill for some years.
Indefatigable
supporters of radical poetry both, the Soars were often met at readings, events
and parties (including ours) in 1990s London.
Geoffrey had semi-retired, I think, then, from his post of librarian at the
Little Magazine and Small Press Collection at University College London, a
resource absolutely vital for tracing the history of innovative poetry in the
Twentieth Century. He published and exhibited at least the following:
Little Magazines Exhibition Geoffrey Soar Published by University College London, 1967
Ezra Pound in the
magazines : an exhibition [held in the] Flaxman Gallery, University
College, London, Library, 9 September-14 October 1977
/ compiled by Geoffrey Soar.
"Joyce and the Joyceans: an
exhibition compiled by Geoffrey Soar and Richard Brown" (1982).
Geoffrey
Soar and RJ Ellis, ‘Little Magazines in the British Isles
Today’, British Book News (December 1983), pp. 728-33
David
Miller and Geoffrey Soar, Little Magazines and How They Got That Way,
Exhibition Guide, 27 September-25 October 1990, Royal Festival Hall, London, draws on the Little Magazine Collection at University College,
London, started
by Soar and maintained by Miller.
Interaction
& Overlap: From the Little Magazine and Small Press Collection at University College
London Miller, David and Geoffrey Soar London:
Workfortheeyetodo, 1994.
Geoffrey was also a painter and Writers Forum will be publishing some work of his soon. Our thoughts are with Valerie.
More on the little presses here.
