Distant readings of the geographies in text corpora : mapping Norman Nicholson’s poems and letters

Donaldson, Christopher Elliott and Murrieta-Flores, Patricia and Gregory, Ian Norman (2016) Distant readings of the geographies in text corpora : mapping Norman Nicholson’s poems and letters. In: Proceedings of the Third Conference on Digital Humanities in Luxembourg with a Special Focus on Reading Historical Sources in the Digital Age :. CEUR Workshop Proceedings . CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Aachen. ISBN 1613-0073

Abstract

This short article summarises a preliminary study of the poetry and correspondence of the English poet Norman Nicholson (1914-1987), undertaken as part of Lancaster University’s Spatial Humanities: Texts, GIS, Places project. In addition to offering a concise explanation of the Spatial Humanities project and the methods it employs, the article explains how working with GIS, visualisation techniques, and distant reading enriches our understanding both of the geography of Nicholson’s poetry and of the spatial dimensions of the network of people with whom he exchanged letters throughout his career.