Jim Granter

Through Wells (Love and Mr Lewisham) and Housman ( A Shropshire Lad) in a sort of fin de siecle way on Wednesday this week and then Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams and e e cummings on Thursday. Religion and sex, especially sex, dominated the responses to all these works. Differences and similarities in attitudes to promiscuity and homosexuality, between the period of these writers’ work, 1890- 1940 and our own times made a happy balance in the lectures and ensuing discussion with the attention we paid to traditional lit crit.  The latter revealed again the wide variety of ways of reading there are, even among 20 or so people.   We don’t really have formal lectures because all three tutors allow and sometimes invite interruptions. They get them uninvited too, such is the enthusiasm and confidence of we students – most of us are clearly over 60 after all. Perhaps this also explains the ease and considerable delight just about everyone shows in talking about sex….

After the morning with the poets I had lunch in Reubens in Newcastle-under-Lyme with a friend who assists at a catholic church. Afterwards she gave me a guided tour of the church, the sort of thing that is always a treat even given my atheist convictions. They have a relic in this church – a piece of a martyr’s arm, kept in box hidden away in a wall unfortunately! Two sculptures by Eric Gill too (interesting hyperlink there) . So loads to think and reflect on that day, to say the least.