I have been an enthusiastic teacher of English for over a decade. But I am, by nature, omnivorous. Over the years, I have wandered outside of my very comfortable pigeon-hole into the exciting world of reading literature in other languages, novel writing, translating poetry, cooking world cuisine and travelling Europe tasting wine (it is a legitimate field of study.)
This blog is a way of sharing some thoughts on writing, books, and ideas. It is also a way of keeping a record of various pieces that may be of interest to the curious reader or student.
Education
I read English at York and followed up those three blissful years with a Masters at Oxford focussing on early modern writers in general and Elizabethan poets in particular. My dissertation was on the two-way influence of (unknown) Samuel Daniel and (rather better known) Shakespeare.
Almost everyone who taught me was borderline mad and dangerously clever. As my supervisor, Prof. John Pitcher said, I was ready to begin my studies at the end of my degree. I haven’t stopped.
Some current pursuits
Reading in French
A 15 year project, still ongoing. It was Baudelaire that turned me on to French literature. I could never understand the fuss in those stilted, oh-so Victorian translations. They sounded like bad Swinburne. So I forced myself through the original text using a crib and a bit of imagination and fell in love with a figure I see as half way between Kenneth Williams and Jack the Ripper.
I started reading properly in French two or three years ago and will share some lessons in this area given the dearth of material online about mastering a language purely for the sake of reading in it.
Music and the Saxophone
Not able to read a note of music a few months ago, I decided to remedy this enormous source of embarrassment by taking up the saxophone. I have always loved music (classical, jazz, rock…) but never pursued it at school. So far, I can struggle through My Funny Valentine and a few other standards. Despite still being relatively terrible, it is an enormous source of enjoyment made all the more thrilling by having a superlative teacher. One of the truly best things I’ve decided to do as an adult.
Translating Baudelaire
You get to know writers best by teaching, editing, or translating them. Getting under the skin of Baudelaire has been tricky and exhilerating. I aim to translate/adapt the entirety of Les Fleurs du Mal over the next few years under the title The Devilish Daisy Chain, attempting to capture some of the ironical whismy of the original that seems (to me) to be missing in many translations.
The novel
Top secret. Tapping away on the typewriter – sometimes daily – sometimes with a hiatus of many months. Perhaps I will never finish. So what?
Adam Alcock 