Victorian Poetry invites submissions for its 2026 Early Career Prize. Please share far and wide! More info in the image / alt-text. Submissions due 3 August 2026.

Kiese Laymon just published a new essay in Vanity Fair. I subscribed just so I can read it because I have what? TASTE.

Sad and long-expected news: Michael Tilson Thomas died last night at 81, nearly five years after first being diagnosed with brain cancer. This will take some time to process. www.sfchronicle.com/entertainmen...

Columbia, SC

"I think the counter to Trump always has been and always will be civil society. A lot of the left wants social change to look like the French Revolution or Che Guevara. Maybe changing the world is more like caregiving than it is like war."- @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/m...

Here is a new poem. Already revised, alas. But for what it’s worth: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202... Many thanks to Jeff Shotts and Kevin Young.

Today's question: how will I teach Antigone to my first-year students next week?

If you, like me, are the parent of a neuro-atypical child dreading this autism press conference, please remember: These are the people hurting our kids. Not us. They are the ones stigmatizing and pathologizing them. They are the ones peddling untested science. And we should be very, very angry.

Sure. Why not.

we must not look at LLMs we must not buy their fruits who knows upon what text they fed their hungry thirsty roots

New issue now available! 'Issue 37: Nineteenth-Century Literary Languages' asks how our understanding of C19th literature and culture changes when we attend more closely to the multilingual past and present of the 4 nations in the UK. Ed. by Karin Koehler and Gregory Tate 19.bbk.ac.uk

The tech world is pushing AI into everything and telling us it's both the way of the future and inevitable. Meanwhile, in the tech world:

Also, almost everything else remains awful, but our conference was good

What a fantastic event this has been! Smart papers, witty conversations, good friends, old and new. Thanks to extraordinary co-organizer @yivory.bsky.social, keynotes @kristinmahoney.bsky.social and @veryverso.bsky.social, as well as everyone else who made this weekend happen. Now, time for a nap.

We can help feed each other and clothe each other. We can take each other in and provide shelter. We can raise money. We can know our rights when it comes to ICE, etc. But I can’t fly a fucking plane. “We’re all we have” has its limits. We need government regulations for a reason.

There's still time to submit a proposal for our upcoming conference, Fin-de-Siècle Modernisms: we've had several requests, so we've extended the deadline to January 12. Come join us in Columbia this spring!

If you work on the period between the 1880s and the 1930s, please consider submitting a paper or panel proposal to the spring 2025 comp lit conference at USC Columbia. We’re excited to have Kristin Mahoney and Ana Parejo Vadillo as our keynote speakers. Please share widely!

Overheard: “The thing about having an English professor as a mom is that she talks about books a lot, but she’ll help you with your essays.” So, on balance, good?

For Public Books, I wrote about the current swathe of university cuts, labor organizing, and the value of deep learning and imaginative expansion. www.publicbooks.org/in-defense-o...

Gorgeous

Wonderful to see good things happening for Victorian Poetry!

I wrote about my experience as a WVU student—and the heartbreak and helplessness I feel now as a professor at a public university. Thanks to @evankindley.bsky.social for the editorial panache. https://www.chronicle.com/article/west-virginia-u-changed-my-life

Essential reading, and it's beautifully written.