While Hidden Door may be all about revealing unseen elements of Edinburgh, poet Theresa Muñoz is focused on the hidden voices of the city’s past. Muñoz will be performing at the festival from her new collection Archivum, based on what it means to look at artefacts and how these objects resonate with our lives. As part of her research, she spent six years poring over the archives in the National Library Of Scotland and the resulting work is inspired by everything from Muriel Spark to 17th-century jam recipes.

‘It’s hard though,’ she says after a pause. ‘I could write about the artefacts, but I have to come into the poem at some point; you have to talk about the self in relation to the object.’ She found a particular kinship with Spark, who moved to London to become a writer, just as Muñoz moved from Canada to Edinburgh. ‘When you leave another country, you get to know yourself a lot better.’  

Much of Archivum is also dedicated to the experiences of multiracial people in Scotland’s history, such as Eliza Jr, the daughter of a slave owner and an enslaved woman, and one of Scotland’s first documented multiracial individuals. ‘I always wonder what happened to her mother, so in the poem that’s who she’s talking to.’ As a third-culture person with Filipino parents, Muñoz is particularly interested in how people of colour move around the world. ‘What does migration cost us when we move, in terms of leaving your family, leaving a past behind and starting somewhere new, and always wondering what your life might have turned out to be? I write about that a lot with Edinburgh.’

The poems are imagined as a walk through the capital. ‘It’s such a strong, proud and handsome city. Those are quite masculine terms I’m using there,’ she says, catching herself, ‘but I find the history is very sensitive. It’s a very meditative place to walk around and feel things.’ Archivum takes readers on a journey from Queen Street Gardens, where Muñoz ponders the changes that life can bring, to Arthur’s Seat and all its possibilities and dangers. With such a strong link to the city, she’s looking forward to performing her poetry at Hidden Door. ‘I like to think it will give a voice to the hidden voices inside the collection and also a sense of who I am as the person who wrote them.’

Theresa Muñoz performs at Hidden Door, The Paper Factory, Edinburgh, Saturday 14 June; main picture: Laura Meek.