Old School

Regular CLM readers--if there are any left out there--will recall that a few months ago I said I was going back to school, after an almost decade-long hiatus. Well, the time has come. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, I'm riding my motorcycle to Fredericton for my first couple of classes at UNB. The good folks there have been most accommodating. Not only have they accepted all of the credits from my earlier foray into grad school, but they're paying me to attend. Part of the deal is a TA-ship, which will take the form of an editorial role with The Fiddlehead. I'll be taking one academic course this semester and a CW course of my own devising next semester (I've yet to work out the finer points, but it will have something to do with rhetoric and description in poetry and will involve some public lectures), along with a non-credit Research Methods course and, of course, my thesis (which will be a collection of poems).

It's a good time for me to finish this degree, as I'm laid off from work long enough to get the courses in. What use the degree might be I don't yet know, but it'll be a way for me to refocus my attention on literature that isn't necessarily Here and Now, which I've been meaning to do for a while, being rather fatigued with the general mediocrity and petty intrigues that predominate at any given time in literary circles. I'll still be a busy freelancer while studying at UNB and might get the odd railroad trip, particularly over xmas, so I don't expect CLM--which has always been the fruit of my idleness--will be as dynamic as it has been in the past. Then again, some of the things I dig up in my studies may well spur blog posts. We'll see.

Happy autumn, everyone. My favourite season.