My colleagues are phenomenal
Big career moment today: I lectured on Milton at his old university. I felt very moved and privileged.
Got rejected from the job I really wanted today. Please send long stories of how getting rejected from a job was the best thing that ever happened to you
Dialectics init
I felt very lucky to see thegesualdosix.bsky.social at St Martin-in-the-Fields tonight. Completely barmy and brilliant in equal measure. If you think it’s impossible to make fresh things, they prove you very wrong indeed
Have come to write lectures in the British Library so I can use their heating instead of my own. Turns out it seems like they had the same idea and it is bloody freezing
Does anyone have a Paris Review subscription and could grab me a pdf of an article?
I agree, unless you write a monograph so wrong and arguable that is eternally discussed, i.e. Bloom, de Man
A timely video by @lewisproberts.bsky.social from @trincollcam.bsky.social on 'The Difficulty of Milton' - on the value of engaging with difficult texts and forms, and lots of interesting stuff about Milton along the way!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMN7...
Thank you Rebecca this is so kind!
I am embarrassingly obsessed with this track
A few bits of personal news. I recently passed my PhD 'The Ends of a Line and the Passion of History'. It makes the case that the end of the poetic line is philosophically and ethically useful, and has been for centuries.
All of this marks a great debt I owe to my supervisor, my friends, and colleagues who helped to make it happen. Lord knows it takes a village to make a PhD.
I have also recently begun a new job as Director of Studies in English at Trinity College, Cambridge. I have very much enjoyed running various outreach activities over the summer, and I am greatly looking forward to the start of term.
A few bits of personal news. I recently passed my PhD 'The Ends of a Line and the Passion of History'. It makes the case that the end of the poetic line is philosophically and ethically useful, and has been for centuries.
I have lived down south for 8 years now, and I am always surprised at how emotional stuff like this makes me. A northern kid with a proper accent at the top of his game. A reminder when it seems unthinkable that it's bloomin' possible
You’re right, posting about politics (especially if you’re supporting the left) is a fool’s errand. I’ll delete it
Some pictures from my visit to the Freud Museum freudmuseumlondon.bsky.social
The couch, and Anna Freud’s brooch
Yes they’re essentially crap poetry aren’t they. What Hopkins called “Parnassian”: when Wordsworth was *doing Wordsworth*. They’re dedicated to his brother Christopher who was a famously dowdy and conservative classicist. Envious of you up there
Aha! One of the last sections of my thesis was on these sonnets. The series seems to have been so important to WW
What a picture! Fond memories of our chatty cycle ride
Very pleased to be leading the "Literature" course in Trinity's Humanities Residential next week. I'll be lecturing on Chaucer's rhymes, Plato's hatreds, Tennyson's genius, and Barrett Browning's polyglossia. Excited to meet some very bright young students, and to attempt wit:
I think it is an unacknowledgedly big problem when people take on editing projects to satisfy their own free time. So many wonderful, but B-list, authors remain without critical editions because someone has pridefully been doing it for three decades
This looks so wonderful - my students will love it!
I hadn't looked at Housman's letters for a while and I had forgotten what catty joy they are
A compliment I’d say - I’d trust the crop-haired lesbians I know with my life
You’re amazing
Mine too! I couldn't believe it
