Typewritten

Sara Green's poem Typewritten is inspired by Phyllis Wager's typewriter, now in the collection of the Polar Museum. When Phyllis Wager travelled to East Greenland as part of a British expedition in 1935, it was so unusual for women to travel to the Polar regions that special permission was needed from the Foreign Office. What can her typewriter tell us about her work? Sara writes, "The idea of being invisible in science and history chimed strongly with me - it appealed to capture what the typewriter must have felt, but not recorded." Charlotte Connelly, Museum Curator at the Polar Museum responds: "I love the idea of the typewriter speaking directly to us, and telling us about its experiences. I especially enjoyed thinking about how the journey to Greenland would cause the typewriter to contract and creak. I also thought it was brilliant to explore how much of the work of an expedition is as transient as a heartbeat or footprints in the snow; only the clear black letters produced by the typewriter survive to tell the tale." This track is part of the Museum Remix: Unheard project. Find out more at: www.museums.cam.ac.uk/museumremix Find out more about Phyllis Wager's typewriter at: https://www.museums.cam.ac.uk/magic/phyllis-wagers-typewriter