I never imagined that I would ever be involved in presenting awards to graduating students, but here I am, a Governor of the University of South Wales presiding over the Caerleon campus graduation ceremony with the Vice Chancellor, Julie Lydon, on 6 September 2013. As it happens, this was the first occasion on which both Chair and VC of the university were women. I am wearing an academic gown for the first time in my life. When I graduated, I decided not to go to my ceremony on the grounds that the University of London had not chosen my preferred candidate to be Chancellor. With other radicals in the student union, I had campaigned for Nelson Mandela. OK he might have been imprisoned on Robben Island at the time, but...
What would I do differently.mov from Deborah Perkin on Vimeo.
I am so sad to hear that Seamus Heaney has died aged 74. His powerful precise poems have been inspirational to me since I was a student. In Elegy he wrote a great truth: “The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life.” He wrote with such humanity, about farmers and memories and violence in Northern Ireland and love and life and our responsibilities to each other in art and occupation. He talked of “lyric defiance” being as important as “civic responsibility”. He made the best translation of Beowulf, and with Ted Hughes he edited a brilliant collection of poems designed to lure people back into poetry. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was a gift to us all.
I’m about to start applying to film festivals now “Bastards” is almost ready to show to the world, starting in early 2014. Elliott Grove who started the Raindance Festival in London in 1993 has some excellent advice to offer indie film makers about festivals. Watch him here…. http://www.raindance.org/the-elliot-grove-interview-at-pinewood-studios-toronto