I spent a very interesting hour listening to a visiting lecturer this evening at the University.  He comes from the Field Chair’s, Nigel McLoughlin, old stomping grounds up in Lancaster and was one of the first people in the UK to introduce Creative Writing as a university subject at that very same university in 1969.

Professor Craig read from ‘The Fourth Quarter’ among other poetry collections, and a short story that he wrote last week.  He’s got one of the most mesmerizing voices I’ve ever heard and his poems had such a rich flow to them that you could really get lost in them.  He was completely unpretentious and had an attitude that suggested that how he was speaking at the lectern was exactly how he’d speak to you sitting at a table in a pub.

I left feeling really geared up about the future.  Listening to the professor and hearing that he’s 75 and still writing, still ‘teaching’ (as much as you can teach writing, which was an interesting line of thought he pursued) and being very creatively active, I realised just how much of a rush I’ve put myself in and how unnecessary that is.  In my head, I’ve got it pegged that I want my PhD done by 26, another two or three books out by then as well, and I’d like to have clocked a few hundred hours lecturing by that time as well.  I’ve got decades to get a PhD, lecture and write books.  I don’t have to do everything in the next ten minutes.

I told him that I wanted to lecture in creative writing and what advice he’d give.   He asked what my credentials were so far, so I rattled off my little list (currently standing at three items, one technically pending as I haven’t graduated yet) and he said I seemed to be on the right track, and that there are some 300 campuses teaching creative writing.  There are posts out there in which to work.  Just keep applying to them and keep your ear to the ground.

So, a pretty amazing guy who would still look a student in the eye and say ‘go for it’ without any bullshit.  Fantastic stuff.

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