As soon as I handed in
my notice I seemed to forget instantly why I’d done it. Was it the various
petty things that had begun to rile me, in the way that things do, perhaps the
longer you’ve stayed somewhere? I wasn’t sure.
I was still in this
state when a colleague told me about a survey he had just read: the surveyors
had compared the life expectancy of academics who retired at 60 with those who
had retired at 65. They found that the latter group contained a higher
proportion of people who pegged out at 70 than the former. It was then I
remembered a piece of advice given to a colleague from my previous place of
employment; his father, who worked in the administration of Guinness’ Brewery
in Dublin, said to him, bluntly: ‘It’s the years between 60 and 65 that kill
you.’
(I improvised around that theme up to this point, and then said) I’m 61! (and began to read)
Those working till 68 will be experiencing a soft genocide
against which you must fight, as life expectancy rolls back.
It is time to look back over the 21 years I’ve been here. Despite
the tension between the practice of teaching and the practice of research,
which can’t really be resolved unless Edge Hill has a sabbatical system, and
which means that teaching impedes research and (it is often forgotten) that
research impedes teaching under such conditions, I’ve done all my best work
while at Edge Hill:
the poetry, the literary criticism, the poetry organising
and editing; the supervision of PhDs, the (too) long Programme Leadership of
the MA, the development of BA poetry writing classes, the pedagogy of poetics
and creative writing, the external examining and all of that:
much of which I will continue as an Emeritus Professor at Edge
Hill (but at my own pace) and I will be around for continuing supervisions and
events.
But of course, none of this is possible without some
marvellous individual students, many of whom have gone on to do good work
themselves,
and to students generally, who have never been exclusively
the consumerist monadic egos that they have been taught to pretend to be, by
various agencies.
Generally depressed by the Brexit result which has left many
of them bereft of a cleanly conceptualisable future, young people have
discovered that they are not just individual consumers but that they form an
electorate, surprisingly left-leaning, that wishes to scrap tuition fees and
loans and even to erase standing student debt. They’ve even been gifted two
elections to try this power out, and they’ve got a taste for it.
That makes this moment a potentially interesting one that
could stall the growing pitting of student against staff and suggests a more collaborative
future for HE
As I put it in a recent poem about ‘one of those days in
sovereign global Britain’
(you didn’t think you were going to get away without this,
did you?)
There are no students in this poem yet their standing debt
Has nurtured a collective electorate that forms beyond
The ‘envies’ of petit bourgeois consumerism
This semantic field is manured with usurers’ tears
but today I want to thank all of you for coming
for gifts
and I want to say that it is the people that makes work work
and I want to perform a little semi-poetic litany
THANKS TO SOME OF MY TEACHING COLLEAGUES
Thanks, thanks to
A for appointing me in 1996 as Course Tutor of the
MA in Writing Studies, suspecting that a migrant from FE would know how to
teach, and that a UEA MA might suffice, and for her calm leadership in
interesting times
B for his sardonic humour and his ability to win numerous New Statesman competitions
C for his 'wheezes' and our shared love of Frank
Sinatra (Sinatra knew how to retire), and for the rational approach to our
two-person Creative Writing show
D for being the Man with the News, the spindoctor
of those Education lit classes I taught for many years (but also the man who
started the MA in 1989)
E for sharing and showing the ropes of the MA, even
if she did lead me by the ear across the room in front of the students to
demonstrate Peter Brooks’ Empty Space
F for being a fine theoretically-minded colleague,
and for possessing the only pair of human legs to be featured on the Antiques Roadshow and who used to stand
in her retro 1960s mini-skirt in front of the first years to lecture on
semiotics and demand, What do I Signify?
G for a fund of rich lunchtime anecdotes on any
subject from animal rights (but I recall his ‘hat of shame’, his animal fur
hat) to trains frozen to the tracks in winter near Southport,
and for the axiom: There’s no virtue in hard work, which I have taken to heart
(as did he)
H for suggesting where we should move to in Liverpool: a hundred yards from her house! And her
continuing neighbourly friendship
I for continually popping hilarious cartoons in my
pigeonhole and for his vigilant trade-unionist eye
K for sharing hysterical high-kicks before
teaching the first years, and for being our first PhD candidate last century
L for sharing hysterical high-kicks before
teaching the first years, and for spreading poetics as a pedagogy (and for lots
more as a close friend of many years, and one link between this post I am now leaving
and my previous one in FE, at the college where he was a student)
M for continuing the two-person show during ongoing understaffing
of Creative Writing, and as a close friend with whom I share a lot of
bewilderment and laughs, particularly in teaching the MA, and supervising PhDs,
together
N with whom I ‘took the engagements’ frequently
and occasionally to excess, who is greatly missed, and with whom I shared my
literary criticism when we were meant to be rehearsing some songs
O for his maniacal laughter, his fragrant hair,
his frequent goading of me, and for his incisively crafted poems
P with whom I’ve shared the supervision of
the longest running PhD in the world, with tremendous humour, and for
co-organising the one conference I dared to, on the anthology, in 1999
Q for hosting my talk for GenSex which had
such an obscene title that it couldn’t be advertised publicly, and for being
the second link between this post I am leaving and my previous one in FE, at
the college where she was a student also
R, whose surname I could never pronounce, who led the MA
opposite, as it were, with an efficiency that shamed my shambling Sheppard show
Comrade S for his leadership when it was needed and
for his light, sardonic humour when that was needed (i.e., always!)
T (for example)
I am speechless on the T
(No, I’m not; how could I leave without resurrecting our
team building awayday when we were invited to express ourselves freely about
the bumper fun activities at the end in One Word, and M said ‘Scissors’ and
I said ‘Time (as in a waste of)’ (technically 6 words); but I was wrong: this
was also the day I saved the Creative Writing MA from integrating into the
super MA he was devising; I used a string of arguments, none of which I
believed….)
U for his quiet ‘thoughtful’ (I’m using the
Dean’s word here) leadership in even more interesting times, and for his following
me along the escape route; in case you’re interested, the entrance is under
that perspex DNA sculpture in the Rose Garden: the tunnel comes out just beyond
the hedge in St Helens Road. From there it’s across country to Town Green
station as fast as you can go…
V, who has been here longer than I have and has
always been a gentle presence, from our first conversations in Sages in 1996 about
where to live, to her steady presence now as associate head, particularly dealing
with my illness earlier this year
W who has been here nearly as long, and who
wittily and animatedly keeps Edge Hill on edge and on its toes, and introduces
his unique interests with enthusiasm (particularly, as far as I’ve been
concerned, on the MA)
and X (who took one of my lit poetry classes as
a student) for her humour (I keep repeating this about people, I know, but it’s
important) and for personal warmth
Y, for her annual comment that she’d been ‘writing
over the summer’, and for her eventually giving in and taking the MA; colleagues
aren’t usually good students, but she was as amiable as her writing is
excellent
Z for his compendious knowledge and for his surprising
marital connection with my schooldays
AA for her guidance in the ever-baffling world of
research, where metrics now means something other than the fixed rhythm of some
poems
CC, whose father in law appeared at our party: What is this music? Van Morrison. I shall return to the other room and listen
to Erik Satie
FF for her (I’m going to have to say it again) humour and
leadership (Rodge and I didn’t even need to unroll the Kim Jong-Un joke we’ve been harbouring all year)
GG for having a grandmother who supplies an aphorism for
nearly every situation in all our lives, and who offers it on call
HH who can make Rodge blush uncontrollably with his
Grinder anecdotes (I’m still thinking about those thick veins)
II whose seriousness, I have to report, is a front:
only he knows what ‘womb-lightning’ is, and how and where and why and who it
strikes, and for his co-leadership of many poetry activities, including our co-editing
of Atlantic Drift (that’s a shameless
plug: it’s out on Saturday!), but my great thanks for thinking up a certain symposium
earlier this year
JJ who is the first of all the Mohicans in this
team
Patricia for bringing work home with her so that we would
actually discuss the progress of our students’ writing out drinking on a
Saturday night
KK, the sound rich witch of the ash tree forest,
who has taken over the reins of the Poetry and Poetics Research Group, ensuring
it faces futurity
AND
LL, who has the dubious honour of being my last teaching
colleague on this long list, and who must come round to look at my Bob Cobbing
archive soon (thus I end by looking forward and not looking back)
and thank you
thank you thank you (to all the rest)...
