Thursday, February 18, 2021

onwards and upwards


Our front yard (with a chunk of rosemary looking irretrievably brown and dead: I think the problem is over-watering).  That thing behind the left-hand gatepost is not a bulging moon, but the street light.

Today was chiefly remarkable for seeing not one, but two of my former students excelling themselves - or representing their excellence: first, Fiona McCrae, from Greywolf Press, who was appearing at a USC event together with my colleague Percival Everett (she's his editor).  I taught Fiona back in 1981-2, at Bristol, and this leaves me worried that she probably has a particular set of insights into quite how unprofessional a young so-called professional I was then.  I remember her being completely stunning in a C20th literature class (in which the set book was Eliot's Four Quartets).  And then later in the day, I attended a lecture by Kate Thomas - Katie-Louise - whom I managed to teach as an undergrad and then work with as a DPhil supervisor, giving a brilliant lecture at - that is, "at" - Harvard on "Lesbian Arcadia: Desire and Design in the Fin de Siècle Garden."  Katie-Louise is now a named chair, at Bryn Mawr!  There ought to be an English term for the academic-maternal-pride that one feels on occasions like these: instead of which all I can do is offer up a lesbian garden.

 

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