The Chaplaincy spire at Lancaster University
If there's been a bit of a gap since the last post, the reason is simple: there's been a lot happening! chief of which is my becoming a student again. I started my MA in Creative Writing with the University of Lancaster a few days ago. Thanks to the miracle of internet contact, I am able to be a student at this northern establishment while sitting in the comfort of my Hastings study.
It means, of course, that my fellow students - there are 22 of us on the course - are also in their respective cubby-holes, and that we shall not be meeting either each other or our tutors until the end of the academic year, when we make a pilgrimage to the distant north (I exaggerate - it just seems a long way from this southeastern corner) for a week on campus.
There's been a certain amount of scrambling around and a threat of toys out of the pram (you know what creatives are like) because of the software, which has had a major revision over the summer, as a result of which we are in a slight Natwest situation, with people unable to access parts of the site. However, there are soothing messages from Lancaster gurus assuring us that these glitches are being resolved, and we have now made tentative incursions to chatrooms and forums like so many timid mice venturing out of their holes in freshers' week.
I have said that I want to do poetry only, and find myself with Eoghan Walls as a tutor. Since I have a strong Irish bias, life could hardly be rosier. The only source of slight panic is that, having loaded up six of my better recent offerings for a pre-tutorial, I find myself having to do another batch for the first tutorial proper on the 21st. This may be taxing my productivity rate - particularly since I have been battling with one poem for several days without seemingly getting anywhere. Grrr. Back to the notebook.
Antony Mair
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