Lecturer in Literature and Place. Nuclear Power and Utopianism. Probably not here anymore
Aberystwyth
Joined January 2009
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Decided to pair books and albums from the same year and place on shelf (D). Today is Don Delillo’s Mao II and Dinosaur Jr’s much-maligned Green Mind. 1991 is pretty much a vintage year for me.
*The year is 1986. You’re plugging away at your poems, sending them to editors, magazines, seeking even the tiniest crumb of feedback. You settle in to read RS Thomas’s latest collection (to whom you have periodically sent drafts, never hearing back)…
ALT Unposted Dear friend unknown, why send me your poems? We are brothers, I admit: but they are no good. I see why you wrote them, but why send them? Why not bury them, as a cat its faeces? You confuse charity and art. They have not equal claims, though the absence of either will smell more or less the same. I use my imagination: I see a cramped hand gripping a bent pen, or. worse perhaps,
Jamie Harris retweeted
It’s arrived! It’s great to be able to hold a copy of ‘The Routledge Handbook of Literary Geographies’ I’ve edited with Neal Alexander. An enormous thank you to the 41 contributors & the editorial team @RoutledgeLit for making it happen.
It’s here! Happy and proud to have contributed a chapter on utopian geographies to this excellent volume. Thanks to the patience and advice of editors Neal Alexander and @DrDavidCooper. Excited to read the rest (nice cover too)!
ALT The cover of the Routledge Handbook of Literary Geographies
I would have loved to be at #AWWE24 this year. Originally didn’t book because we’re expecting a little one to arrive any second now. Then I broke my foot playing football last night (so wouldn’t have made it anyway). It’s such a brilliant event, hopefully next year I’ll be back!
RS Thomas, in a letter to Raymond Garlick, complimenting Ted Hughes in his own inimitable way
ALT Text reads: I hope the Ted Hughes meeting goes well. He is my favourite reader of poetry.
Jamie Harris retweeted
Hemingway was asked to come up with a six-word story to encapsulate the economic mismanagement of the UK
This semester I had the chance to redesign part of a theory module, based on my own interests. It's so gratifying to see students' work on Jan Morris, Le Guin, Raymond Williams, and utopianism. I've written on them all before and I'm still learning loads from their essays!
If you haven’t seen this campaign yet, please take a look. The continued existence of our magazines in spite of continued cuts to funding is miraculous, but it can’t continue like this forever. We would all be diminished by their absence #SaveWelshMagazines
Update on the #SaveWelshMagazines campaign...time is very short, so please spread the word and post messages of solidarity to @CreativeWales @Books_Wales @WGCulture.
I’ve been published in @Planet_TWI a few times over the years, but I never thought I’d be modelling the merch! If you can afford it, please subscribe. If enough of you do, you’ll ensure the future of a brilliant magazine.
They might even consider getting some prettier models…
ALT A picture from the new issue of Planet, advertising new subscription models and featuring a man with curly hair and a blue Planet t-shirt standing next to a castle.
Hope everyone is having a great time at #awwe23 After attending the first day of awwe18 the day before my wedding, I’ve don’t feel so bad about skipping this one for my fifth anniversary weekend (still a little jealous though)
People worry about the pernicious influence of the behaviour of professional footballers on today’s grassroots. However, I just saw a young lad deliberately trip over his mum’s trailing leg on the school run, which is an infinitely funnier consequence of modern shithousery.
Local church group meeting at the local pub. Overheard so far: ‘cultural Marxist media run the country’, ‘new world order’, and ‘as Father Nicholas used to say’…
A bit late but I’m finally celebrating the end of a long and difficult dry* January
*I haven’t read Raymond Williams for a whole month
This is an important, serious collection (and I’m in it). However, my stupid obsession with pairing alphabetically-aligned books and records stops for nothing. So, The Welsh Way gets paired with Jonathan Wolff’s Seinfeld soundtrack (2021), for as long as I can take it.
My 2 year old slept through the night for the first time in months and I’m using all that well rested brain power to wonder why is if spelled ‘if’ if off is spelled ‘off’. Why not iff?
A few more night’s sleep and I’ll be unstoppable.