During the 1960s and 1970s, a group of poets known as the Belfast Group, including Philip Hobsbaum and Seamus Heaney, met to exchange poetry drafts and criticism. Commemorating the poets' literary and social networks, is the Belfast Group website. Published by Emory University - where many of the Group's archives are housed - the project is staffed by a team of archivists, software engineers, and digital humanities specialists. Readers can examine drafts of original poems, plays, and stories, or explore a social network analysis (SNA) that charts the connections between Belfast Group members as evidenced by archived letters. These SNA visualizations are accompanied by three essays that examine the history of the Belfast Group and the strengths - and drawbacks - of using available archival materials and SNA to gain insight into the Group. Particular attention is paid to female participants and the difficulty of tracking the experiences of these women with available sources. Thus, the Belfast Group website is as much an examination of the possibilities and limitations of the digital humanities as it is a place to explore an important school of twentieth century poetry.
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