In 1977, during her visit to Brno in Czechoslovakia, an English nurse Frances Meacham randomly heard about Czech poet Ivan Blatný, who, at that time, was living in a psychiatric clinic in Ipswich, England. She met Blatný’s cousin Jan Šmarda and after her return to England, Meacham started regularly visiting Blatný and collecting his manuscripts. Thus, Meacham’s visit to Czechoslovakia in 1977 was crucial to the preservation of Ivan Blatný’s manuscripts written in exile.