I’ve just been alerted to the state of my artwork at Roehampton University. I was commissioned to create a monumental piece of visual poetry on the side of Fincham Court at Roehampton University (my alma mater); the building seems to have been abandoned, the offices sit empty, and the piece has been allowed to degenerate and degrade.

Sadly, this seems more than a little symbolic as Fincham Court was once home to Roehampton’s Creative Writing department. Roehampton University instituted mass lay-offs and the elimination of a number of humanities-based programs including classics, anthropology, photography, and creative writing. Those shameful lay-offs, which included the destruction of the department of creative writing, has meant job losses for many exceptional peers and colleagues – folks who were vital to the UK poetry and prose communities, who demonstrated mentorship and teaching of the highest level, who were publishing consistently, and who were instrumental in my own career. Many were given untenable options for the continuance of their careers, and have found themselves in tenuous positions since.

The mural, in better days, looked like this:

I sure hope that Roehampton is dedicated to restoring this work in memory of the exceptional creative writers who taught, studied, and wrote in those halls…