Tuesday 4 January 2011

How the Amstrad PCW 8512 changed the course of English Literature


Poetry Publishing and Technology in 1985
By Peter Sansom

Desk-top publishing was quite primitive at first, or my version of it, so that I remember very clearly putting letraset onto an Ian McMillan/Martyn Wiley cover on a desk in Huddersfield Polytechnic library, and feeling a definite move up in the technological world when I acquired a set square and cutting board.

And not really desk-top publishing at all but typed on a wordprocessor. The first little Macs were just coming in, but for me then it was the Amstrad PCW 8512. Amstrads were cheap and everywhere and, though limited, just a bit more professional and certainly quicker than a typewriter. 

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[Editor's note: It takes more than just a word processor to change the course of English Literature of course, and in fact it was done by a working class lad from Mansfield with a polytechnic education, a Keats' Selected Poems and an Amstrad PCW 8512. I'm hoping to persuade Peter to write a piece for Issue 2 about how he created a history changing literary scene in a small former mill town. His piece will be full of essential transferable insights for anyone wanting to build a scene to support any kind of innovation.]

http://v.gd/apwdamstrad