But, but, but

what about Poland, do I hear you cry? All that build up,  you've been back nearly a fortnight and you leave us hanging with nary a word.

This is all true. I think I had to get some distance because academic conferences, however dry they might sound to the outsider, are actually quite intense experiences, involving as they do a confined place, a compressed time scale, some very high powered presentations and some equally high powered academic egos.

So overall the conference was overwhelming, exhausting, stimulating, enervating; but ultimately a beneficial and positive experience. My paper was well received, possibly I benefited here from being 'on' early.  I restricted myself to asking only two questions during  the entire three days, which I think is a good sign that I haven't turned into a Question Asker, which is a possibility that haunts me as I have mentioned before.

There were some other excellent papers too; it would be odious to make comparisons, but the presentations that stay with me for the right reasons, mainly because they were about writers or writing in which I was already interested were from a) a young Czech scholar talking about the poetry of Derick Thomson and b)  a lecturer from the Sorbonne talking about The House with the Green Shutters by George Douglas Brown. But there were many other good things.

 

A really positive thing for me was learning that the organisers had turned down a third of the papers they were offered, which makes me feel good to be chosen and banishes any lingering suspicion I might have had about being asked along to make up the numbers.

 

And here is the conference venue itself