Month: June 2011

When did the poet Ros Barber die?

Ros Barber
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I’ve been toying with whether I should let you know this or not.    I am a Google Analytics user.   I know how people arrive here,  and specifically the search terms they use.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t spend much time on it, but every now and then I have a curious glance and it’s usually so disturbing that I don’t look again for a few weeks (and then the urge strikes me and I can’t help myself. A bit like the urge to take the dressing off every now and then to peek at the festering wound.)

The search terms are illuminating.  ‘When did the poet Ros Barber die?’ was a bit of a shock at first.  And then I figured that, coming from someone without much connection to the fairground goldfish stall of living  poets,  it was logical:

  1. she’s a poet
  2. I’ve heard of her
  3. the only other poets I’ve heard of are dead
  4. ergo, she is dead.

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Bring on the Doctor Doctor jokes

Ros Barber
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I’ve been meaning to write this post ever since I passed my DPhil viva (oral examination, for those of you not familiar with academic lingo) three and a bit weeks ago.  But maybe it’s okay that it’s taken me ages to get round to it. Since I became a Proper Academic* (*there are provisos here) I’ve been in a real kick-my-shoes-off-and-do-nothing mood.  It’s a very unfamiliar feeling.  For four and a half years now, I’ve felt driven to be at that desk every day from 8am (sometimes earlier), and had to be physically dragged away from it – usually after 6pm – by family members, concerned I should eat, drink, mingle with normal human beings, remember what daylight looked like etc.

I’m exaggerating, but not much.  A writer friend of mine (who after all, knows all about obsession) calls my study “my burrow” (it is, essentially, underground – and as I’ve probably mentioned before, I work in the dark).  Several times during my PhD (I use these terms interchangeably because few people outside academia are familiar with ‘DPhil’) she tempted me out of my burrow with the offer of lunch at my favourite restaurant, only, she said, because she was worried I would otherwise start growing hair on my paws.

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