Bottoms, Tom and Rita

Administrative History

Rita Bottoms, the Head of Special Collections at UC Santa Cruz from 1966-2003, played a central role in establishing and promoting Kenneth Patchen Archive. The main collection includes over 150 Patchen's "painted poems", colorful paintings that incorporate free-verse poetry and surrealistic and whimsical creatures and images to manuscripts of poetry and prose, as well as Patchen's letters, other painted books editions, papier-mache creatures, and recordings of some of his poetry readings.

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