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...

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.

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

Some pictures from my visit to the Freud Museum freudmuseumlondon.bsky.social The couch, and Anna Freud’s brooch

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

I hadn't looked at Housman's letters for a while and I had forgotten what catty joy they are

A superb speech. Intelligent, brave, and true. youtu.be/qRbXY_bOemc?...

Highlights from student essays this week: Rossetti as a reader of Bunyan's theology of repetition; postcolonial poetics in the Ossian poems; Aurora Leigh and cognition; and Paradise Lost quoted in the black liberation movement. How lucky I am to teach such amazing people

There is a colossal Easter egg hunt going on in our neighbourhood, and the streets are filled with half elated children, and half sobbing children. It is quite the sight

Astonished and deeply moved by the Grayson Perry exhibition at the Wallace Collection. Rarely, if ever, have I felt in the presence of genius at a contemporary art exhibition - Grayson Perry is a total wizard, genius, and a serious force for good in our fragile world

Does anyone know anything about the late-Victorian periodical 'The Quarto'? Could anyone point me in the direction of who might?

I have spent the afternoon trying to work out exactly what the word "or" means. You'd think doing my third degree in English I'd have worked that out by now

"Sartre's approach prevents him from recognising the hell he is rebelling against." - Adorno, 'Commitment'

This is one of the most remarkable things I have read in a long time www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Aurora Leigh on a Sunday evening: poets should Exert a double vision; should have eyes To see near things as comprehensively As if afar they took their point of sight, And distant things as intimately deep As if they touched them.

Just received a menu for a conference dinner in Paris which must be directly translated from from French because the first item is "Perfect egg"

Writing about Felicia Hemans today, in relation to the somewhat ignored feminist theory of Catherine Clément. Gripping stuff