Byard's Quantum Leaps

In August last year, I was promoted by Nottingham Trent University to Professor of Modern Literature and Creative Writing. This March, I gave my inaugural lecture. Above is a video of that - or at least a video of my slides, with audio. Several people who couldn’t be there have asked whether it was recorded. I didn’t think it would be, but I was wrong, so here you go. The audio isn’t always perfect (probably my fault for moving about), and I’m not sure why the slides appear again in miniature in the bottom right corner, but never mind.

I enjoyed myself, and it was wonderful to be surrounded by so many friends, colleagues (from NTU and elsewhere), former colleagues, students, former students, and members of my family. Those aren’t mutually-exclusive categories.

An ‘inaugural’ is a rite of passage, and is supposed to be several things at once: a research lecture, but also a public event; a formal occasion, but also a celebration. I attend as many of them as I can - typically one or two a year - and usually come away thinking I’ve learned something useful about psychology, or healthcare, or molecules, or whatever. But I’d never put much thought into what I might talk about, should the vague possibility become a requirement.

I chose to focus on a folk tale. Most people who know me won’t have expected that: my focus has always been on poetry above all else. However, I recently led the project ‘Lincolnshire Folk Tales: Origins, Legacies, Connections, Futures’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, so it seemed sensible to focus on an aspect of that. Besides, as a friend said to me in January, when I was working out what I might talk about, ‘focus on the folk tales - more people care about those’. (He has recently retired from an academic career dedicated to poetry.)

If you would like to read a book about this sort of thing, click here, or on the image below. This book will be published in May, but can be preordered now for just £12.99. Over the next month, I’ll share a few excerpts from it on this new Substack, then I’ll probably go back to writing about poetry, places, and the various things that wind me up (also not always mutually exclusive categories).

Finally, here are a few photos of friends and family, taken on the day of the lecture. It is rare for me to see so many people I care about in one place.

Photo: Phil Nodding

L-R: Tony and Jaci (Francesca’s parents), my aunt Jo, my mum, my cousin Kailash, Francesca, muggins, my mate Adam, who was at least four pints in by the time I took to the podium.

My mum, Matt, Anjna, and muggins. Anj and I did our PhDs together, then I lived with her in Leicester for a few months when I started my job at NTU in 2012.

My mum, who is the dedicatee of my new book. She brought me from Ireland to her native Lincolnshire as a wee wain, after all.

Current PhD student Lucy Grace, former MA Creative Writing student Bryna Broady, former NTU colleague Anna Milon (who was the postdoctoral research fellow on the AHRC Lincolnshire Folk Tales project), and Gwynne Harries, who hosted some sort of American radio show about poetry that we used to record about once a month when I was a PhD student at the University of Leicester.