Mary Oliver: *Thirst*

Another blip in the vow of silence, but it may be that blogging can be part of the fabric of the heads-down life this summer.

I can't get on with my work until I have savagely processed everything that comes in my door. About the only junk mail not utterly hated by me is the publicity from Bloodaxe Books, as there is usually about one good poem in their flyers that I might keep. I think I love poetry but I don't buy much or read much, so actions speak louder than thoughts.

This time the poem that lifted off the page was by Mary Oliver, much loved American poet. You can read about her and her lover, Molly Malone Cook, if you google about a bit. Sapphie isn't too big on love, having been love's fool all her life, but this poem is cool. I don't think that Bloodaxe will mind me printing it out here as it's on their own publicity material. You can buy the volume, Thirst, from September for £8.95. ISNB 9781852247768.

A Pretty Song

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn't it?
This isn't a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.

"Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills"

What a gross new title. Universities have, for hundreds of years, been the disseminators of the precious life blood of our civilisation. Now they are places where academics spend more time sweating over grant applications than they do thinking, reflection, writing. They are places that should be called .inc/.org/.plc and the like. They are places where funding to departments is given in direct relation to how many foreign students (read "big payers") are recruited. So business schools get all the money. Classics and Philosophy get nothing.
Can't there just be a Department of Education where Universities are a part of it? -- somewhat at the other end from kindergartens.

And I have no opinion whatsoever of John Denham, another great burly white male in a suit. Everyone please note: he was a great proponent of top-up fees. MY POOR students. Education should be free for everyone, as it was for Blair's and Brown's and Denham's generation.