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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 1d

Will do!

Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 1d

Thinking about it, apart from the news I want to share with her, I realise I've never sent her the article I wrote last year about that show, nor ever played her the tune I wrote for her 20+ years ago. Perhaps catching up is way overdue, if I can.

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 1d

Does anyone have contact details for Sarah Goldingay? She was at Exeter, but the staff page appears to be defunct. I did a show with her many years ago and am trying to get in touch.

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 1d

Me in my very early 20s with my (much-missed) dad. I think we'd gone to pick my sister up from a friend's house, but it's the fact that it's such an insignificant moment that makes it so lovely. I've no idea why we were so relaxed, so happy, but it fills me with joy every time I even think of it.

Me as a young man with my dad, both smiling

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 1d

I've lately been doing many (fully scripted) conference papers without slides, often in tandem with papers by Matt Cheeseman, who works from heavily bullet-pointed slides and no script. He told one conference my slide-free approach was 'old-school', but it's mostly because I just can't be arsed.

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Reposted by Paul Cowdell

The Folklore Society @folkloresociety.bsky.social · 5d

📢Call for Papers📢 ‘Folklore on the Move’: The Folklore Society’s annual conference 2026 in collaboration with the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen. In person conference: 5-7 Jun 2026; online conference day: 10 Jun 2026. Proposal deadline 14 Dec www.folklore-society.com/event/call-f...

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 2d

Other Morans are available

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 3d

Given how much I love Gillian Bennett's 'Traditions of Belief' - one of my favourite books - my inability ever to remember where I have shelved my copy is psychopathologically fascinating.

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 4d

That's definitely something to take up with Folklore Fellows themselves, as I know nothing of their funding systems.

Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 6d

I'm so proud of my students. It is only week 2 and they have already broken the bureaucratic will of the course admin office. I couldn't be happier.

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 6d

How did I miss this news at the time? Vegetable Eurovision.

A picture of some potatoes, headed 'Announcement: The potato is the crop of the year 2024'

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 6d

How long are you over for?

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 9d

The CfP for next year's Folklore Fellows Summer School is now open. It's a great panel of excellent keynotes. Worth flagging up to encourage as wide a participation of younger career scholars as possible.

Summer School 2026 - Folklore Fellows

11th Folklore Fellows' Summer School: Interdisciplinarity and Involvement – Enduring and Emerging Sites of the Vernacular. Helsinki and Tvärminne, Finland, 17th–21st August 2026.

www.folklorefellows.fi

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 9d

I suspect it might have been beyond rescue even before the foxes started playing with the loose ends of line.

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 10d

Astonishingly, for late September, I have just bought my first Christmas present. On top of this unexpected organisational flourish, it's such an absolute belter it'll be difficult to keep secret from the recipient for the next 3 months.

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 10d

👏

Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 10d

Donation clusters to individual charity shops are always slightly random. (One local shop presently heavy with C19 religious history, for example). But finding a raft of biographies of Michael Collins in multiple charity shops across the Island seems... unusual. A very particular book club, perhaps.

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 10d

Partner still away, so I fully anticipated something breaking down/going wrong. Full marks for the surprise value of it being the washing line.

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 11d

I was a teenager studying Classics (Latin and Greek). Loved Romantic poetry as well as classical poetry, and Tony Harrison showed how eg Roman lyric could be connected with a modern world. This wasn't just Augustan copying of classical forms, it was a real, vital, poetry.

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 11d

He said 'I know more Latin and Greek than TS Eliot and Ezra Pound put together, but I don't put it in my poetry. Apart from this word, which in Greek tragedy expresses heightened emotion, but sounds like something one of the Crazy Gang used to say'. And it's appropriate: αιαι. Ay ay! (2/2)

Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 11d

Damn. With a short -a-, obviously (Aeschylus wrote short vowels, and so do I, he said about the Oresteia). For teenage classicist me, his was the voice that connected so many threads and strands of language, register, passion, fury. (1/2)

Tony Harrison, poet and dramatist, dies aged 88

Known for his outspoken politics, the author was acclaimed for work in theatre, opera, film and TV but wanted to be thought of as a poet above all

www.theguardian.com

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 12d

'I will give you impossible things to do, then shout at you when you can't do them.'

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 12d

Toby Jones reading Michael Coveney's biography of Ken Campbell, 'The Great Caper', is also worth seeking out. It doesn't seem currently to be on BBC Sounds, unfortunately.

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Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 12d

'I like big charts and diagrams' - Len Deighton on writing.

Paul Cowdell @paulcowdell.bsky.social · 14d

That's the worst portrait of Frank Sidebottom I've ever seen.

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