We are delighted to announce the opening of submissions for Fonds 3, the third edition of the anthology of creative writing inspired by the holdings of DMU Special Collections! And this year for the first time we are opening up the competition to members of the public as well as staff, students and alumni of DMU!
Fonds 1 and 2
For the past two years DMU Special Collections has collaborated with the MA Creative Writing to publish an anthology of creative work inspired by the materials in our archive in Prose, Poetry and Word & Image categories. Submissions for Fonds were inspired by a wide range of pieces in the archive, including the artworks of Tracy Kelly and Andrew Logan, newspaper reports about airships and film stars, books about birds and botany, scientific equipment and Victorian photographs. Fonds 2 drew on a similarly diverse set of inspirations including Russian space exploration, feminist poetry, heraldry and Japanese photography. For the first time two pieces from the University Art Collections also sparked creative responses. You can access digital copies of Fonds and Fonds 2 on our 'Creative Responses to the Archive' webpage.
'Tulips for Dorothy' by Megan Lupton, from Fonds.
Information for Fonds 3:
· Open to all students, staff and alumni of DMU as well as members of the public
· Deadline: 10th April 2026
· Submit a piece of creative work from 3 categories:
o Prose (max 500 words) including short fiction, flash fiction, creative non-fiction, drabbles and translation
o Poetry and Script (poems to be max 40 lines not including the title; scripts to be max 4 pages)
o Word and Image (max 1 A5 page) including collage, visual poetry and zine pages, submit as a jpeg
· The submission must be inspired by an item from DMU Special Collections
· Please include an artist's statement explaining which archive piece you were inspired by
· An award will be offered for the best submission in each category
To find out more about accessing DMU Special Collections and what’s in the archive collections please see our website: Welcome - Special Collections. We are based in KL 00.21 on the Lower ground Floor of the Kimberlin Library, and are open 10.00-17.00 Tuesday to Friday. If you cannot visit Special Collections then you are welcome to use our online resources as inspiration, for example our online exhibitions, articles and social media.
To enter your submission please complete this form: https://forms.office.com/e/WXbQyRCB4N.
0 Comments.