Visiting Writer Page

The lovely folks at the Centre for Modern and Contemporary Writing (CMCW) in Southampton University have added a listing of me on their blog.

The mission the CMCW sets out of to ‘bring together academics, writers, and research students with interdisciplinary interests in the relations between 20th and 21st-century writing and contemporary culture in all its forms.’

My ArtfulScribe Residency at the University’s John Hansard Gallery has let me swim into their ken and it’s a generous, intellectually broadening experience to spend time in their company.

Just today I spotted in the London Review of Books, a piece on a collection of articles on poet F.T. Prince edited by member of CMCW Will May. I hadn’t realised before I attended the centre’s research day last month that Southampton Uni’s English Dept had been been headed by F.T. Prince in the post-war years. Prince is a poet I’ve been curious about for some time (I posted his ‘Last Poem’ on this blog back in 2012) and it’s wonderful to walk unawares into the centre of research on this rhapsodic, lyrical, sexually-charged voice from a time when many of the discussions that shape my identity as a gay/queer man within British culture were being triangulated.

Am looking forward to further time spent at the centre over the coming year. I hadn’t quite realised when I applied for the writing residency how much access I would have to this aspect of university life and it’s a wonderful boon!