Blog for My Simon Armitage Seminar

I've started a blog for my course on Simon Armitage that is starting next week. The students will be posting there; I'll continue with more posts on Armitage here. (May the discussions in the seminar be as interesting as the discussion of my post on "Night Shift"!)

Anonymous users

I've been getting so many spam comments by anonymous users that I've had to turn off the comments for anonymous users. Has anyone else seen a rise in spam comments lately?

Comments on blogs

Arnold Zwicky on Language Log:

I resent the idea that Language Log should not only be expected to provide blogging space to everyone who wants to write — if you enable comments, then the space belongs to the commenters, not to you, as any number of people have explained to me now, contemptuously — but should also allow commenters to conceal their identity, even from the bloggers.

I fully agree with Arnold here: the comments on my blog are part of my blog, of which I am the editor, and I decide which comments I accept and which ones I delete.

I am lucky, I guess, in that I have never had to deal with offensive comments, but if I ever get any, they won't make it onto my blog!

Six random things; TAG

This is a response to a tag from George Szirtes.

1. Though I play guitar and mandolin, my first instruments were cornet, drums, and flute, none of which I can play now. I did not start learning to play guitar until I was almost 19, in the summer of 1983.

2. I did not start learning German, for that matter, until I was already 19, in the fall of 1983.

3. In fact, I went to college to study physics, but I got sidetracked by Nietzsche.

4. I did not get the joke about the word "beat" in the name of "The Beatles" until I was well into my thirties.

5. [It's hard to think of six things!] If I had not moved to Basel in 1995, I would have gone to spend a year in Poland with my girlfriend (now wife) Andrea, where she would have had a job as a German teacher.

6. [Something many people already know] I attended over 80 Grateful Dead concerts between 1982 and 1993, plus several dozen Jerry Garcia shows (I'd say 30-40).

As George wrote me in an email:

Rules of Tagging:

• Post these rules on your blog.
• Write six random things about yourself in a blog post.
• Tag six people of your own.
• Stick in a link for each person tagged.
• Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
• Let the tagger know your entry is up.

Six people:

Mr. Jumbo
Don Brown
Cyril Wong
Swiss
Al Filreis
Michaela

My apologies if any of you have done this one already!

Blogs in Europe, the UK

If you read this, and you are blogging from Europe or the UK with at least part of what you blog about being poetry (or if you know anyone who is), please tell me (or tell me about the people you know). You can post a comment or send me an email.

Nicholas Manning and renew: you don't count; I already know you. :-)

Delurking

This is National Delurking Week, or at least somebody declared it that.