Louisa Reid’s The Poet (2023),
a novel written in verse,
‘stops [her] in [her] tracks’ (Manning, 2025, p. 12):
perhaps turning prose
into poetry,
will ‘angle[] a life [post-doctorate] …
make[] it livable’ (ibid.) …
The morning after the Viva, with a book chapter abstract to write,
she thinks, this is okay,
this post-doctorate life;
but the following morning, she wakes bereft,
with no writing deadlines demanding to be met,
this is not okay,
this post-doctorate life;
and so she lovingly prepares the thesis for its final journey,
secretly hoping this won’t be it;
with the viva creating a sense of middling, of intersecting lines,
the passed thesis becoming-book, becoming-journal paper or two,
it’s a very different atmosphere from sitting here three months ago
too scared to click the submission link,
fearing failure,
fearing not having achieved justice
for the sixteen-year-old protagonist denied a second chance
by the further education college that should have offered one.
At the end of the month, she forces her self to stop checking and
uploads the thesis to the repository because
she wants the award in the same month as the viva,
but
the passed thesis
is rejected
not once,
but twice …
3.5 years later
Because the writing never cared that the doctoral studies were over,
numerous becoming-texts now lie dormant on scraps of paper,
on Onedrive, on her laptop, and on external hard drives;
She can only wonder what,
together,
they might do …
As with the PhD, these post-viva writings have no cohesive whole,
or perhaps they do:
grief at the loss of a much-loved degree;
frustration at the overruling of the examiners’ decision;
sadness at the relentless rejections;
dissatisfaction and discontentment with jobs outside the academy;
a soul still seeking sustenance 42 months after the official end.
The end of the PhD Years
She’d only ever wanted to be a PhD student,
to read, write, think and do …
She didn’t want to submit her writing,
She didn’t want to become a ‘doctor’,
but she was swept along in a system
of deadlines insisting her time was up,
that the thesis be submitted on the
29th October 2021,
and then,
unexpectedly,
the thesis is turned back on its maiden flight,
the PhD withheld for non-compliance;
she tries to explain that the presentation is deliberate,
that to change anything affects the integrity of the work,
which challenges the constraints of the conventional academic thesis
and so was never going to comply with University regulations,
and, eventually, with some subterfuge on the thesis’ part,
it is accepted into the repository where it now lies
ready to take off
at the click of a mouse.
Afterwords
She’s loved reading and writing so much she can’t imagine doing anything else;
she turns down a full-time admin post,
not yet ready to give up the dream,
hoping for just an eye in the ivory tower,
but the door slams shut again and again and again,
each rejection a further turn of the key.
Because it’s better to be in than out,
she starts an administrative job –
it destroys her on day one, but she returns day after day for months
until hastily giving it up
for a two-month teaching contract.
Unemployed again, she happily focuses on her book,
then teaches undergraduates to write academically
until a new manager disrupts
the previously academic atmosphere and ethos:
feeling micromanaged and constrained and unable to breathe,
when she’s told to get another job,
she does…
in the University’s Graduate School
because it is better to be in than out …
She feigns resignation to a non-academic career,
but her soul still seeks sustenance, and
the writing sees no reason to stop.
Presenting at conferences gives her writing a purpose, her a reason to write:
after six months she presents some collaborative writing,
on the anniversary of the viva, the becoming-thesis is presented to the world,
six months later it’s the turn of the becoming-book,
presented along with a paper about the disloyalty of writing something other;
after two years, after 30 months, and after three years,
various post-PhD writings are presented – might one take flight …?
Writing stopping; writing starting
At 42 months,
there’s a call for abstracts,
but
no
response…
is this the end?
The conference theme is breathing spaces, but
back in the academy’s administration straitjacket,
the writing answers the call
6 weeks too late;
only in the mi(d)st of annual leave,
a heatwave,
the 2025 Wimbledon tennis championships,
is there space to breathe.
She’s long-since realised she cannot control the writing,
has to let it have its say,
when its ready,
although she’s noticed
its capaciousness to be affected by whatever she reads:
fiction, philosophy, theory -
contouring and edging
like the ball in play on centre court.
There’s writing exemplifying that,
sometimes explicitly,
sometimes not.
There’s writing with citations,
writing with out,
writing with(in) events,
and writing with(in) texts;
but,
no longer writing with supervisors,
how does she know
which texts to terminate,
which to tamper with?
Perhaps she would know, if she had power (Pelias, 2016, p. 153),
but, out of the academy, what power does she have?
There’s a few pieces she reads and quite likes,
many she doesn’t,
rarely does she like a whole piece -
perhaps she will edit those ones, perhaps not:
‘Better to be a road-sweeper than a judge’ (Deleuze & Parnet, 2002, p. 7);
but ‘we are always evaluating … Nothing escapes’ (Pelias, 2016, p. 120)
and there’s no doubt - she’s
her own worst critic …
The writings with texts are her favourites,
writing with her idols, ‘elders’ (Gale & Wyatt, 2009),
gives her courage,
inspiration.
Is she writing another book, a journal paper?
No, she’s simply writing, reading, thinking and doing.
The pressure to write, to perform, is all with(in) her:
she is the only one troubled by her non-attendance at the conference
because the writing is coming too late;
she’s annoyed with her self for not trusting the writing;
not just submitting an abstract asking for space
to share whatever emerged in between,
as she has done before;
for missing the conference
she knows she’d have enjoyed.
She writes for her self, to sustain a grieving soul.
She wonders, if that’s enough of a reason to write,
if it has to be more-than;
she wonders …
and she wonders …
She could interrupt these verses with prose,
there’s no shortage of writing, waiting,
but would the prose of those other writings
‘help or hinder other writing’? (Pelias, 2016, p. 87)
She remembers the panic email when the PhD texts didn’t connect,
how a subsequent conversation and a look at Erin Manning’s ‘Artfulness’ (2015, 2016)
made her get out of the way …
and only then
did the texts connect.
She wonders, as Djokovic seeks a way to beat Sinner,
if ‘artfulness’ might
come into play again,
with these post-doc writings …
In the meantime, deadlines loom for a collaborative journal paper,
a collaborative book chapter,
and, happily,
with spaces now to breathe,
the writing continues …
Postlude
Erin Manning writes that the university is in ruins;
On the 31st July 2025,
Mary’s beloved university collapses around her
together with the academic dreams held on to for too long;
sitting at her desk,
she fears for the future,
and, with changes of supervisors flooding the inbox,
appreciates her supervisory team stayed the same.
The gaps and silences the next day are traumatic,
friends of hers now have ‘X’ on their records;
she fears for them, their future, the future without them …
And amidst these fears,
this poem fascinates her,
the writing writing
might this be ‘what [Carolyn] Forche describes as ‘‘poetry of witness” – that is, poetry that exists in the social space between the personal (emotional, particular, individual but not outside of history) and the political (public, partisan, critical, communal)? (Harris & Holman Jones, 2016, pp. 75–76).
