Waterstone's

Today brought the unsurprising news that Waterstone's is up for sale by HMV. Apparently they plan to use the money from the sale to reduce their debt and create a "turnaround plan" for the music stores. If I'm honest I don't think it will matter what or who you sell, sadly HMV is on it's way out as a result of online buying and in store competition. Being forced by the banks to sell in order to pay off debts, HMV seems to be on an ever increasing downward spiral.
Valued at £50m to £70m Waterstone's faces an interesting future. When Borders UK first came up for sale in 2007 it was sole for a mere £20m and struggled in a "declining market", eventually going under. So who knows what's going to happen to Waterstone's. Rumours of Dominic Myers creating a management buyout are rife at the moment, and no doubt Tim Waterstone will try and form some sort of buyout. Personally I love Waterstone's, having worked there on and off for years it's sad to watch it's slow decline. From the closing down of twenty stores to it's sale, hopefully someone will but it out and change it around, however I think they are facing a difficult and rapidly changing market. Whoever buys it needs to realise the potential and instead of wasting time bringing in new agendas, new stock such as DVDs (only to return them six months later because they weren't selling) and overpriced children's toys, they need to focus on what they are about and that is books. They will be taking over a range of staff, the majority of which know their stuff inside and out, and need to realise this potential. Waterstone's needs an ownership that will support staff, accentuate their knowledge and give them credit for it, instead of treating them like imbeciles.
Personally, I don't think that the current management will particularly do that, from my experience of them they seem to struggle to organise the next weeks offers and POS. However, when it's your own company as opposed to someone else's the urge to make in run smoothly, reduce waste and increase profit is probably a lot higher.
I will be reading The Bookseller avidly, waiting for the next installment.

Poetry.

I will have been here exactly a month tonight and I think I can safely say that I am completely settled in now. Well, I still get lost on campus, but it has its own postcode so it’s pretty huge. I think that’s allowed.

One thing I am surprised with is how much I am enjoying the creative writing class that I was dreading. It’s one of my favourites now. I don’t know if it’s because the tutor is really excited about anything you produce and really encouraging, because it’s a good group of classmates. I don’t know. I am still dreading workshopping however. I realise its constructive criticism and all but it still feels a bit mean analysing someone’s first draft in such a critical way.

One thing I have been musing on is whether or not I want to put the poems I am working on on here as a way of slowly getting myself into workshopping. However, the thought of releasing those few things I have written onto the World Wide Web is not really appealing. Also I don’t want this blog to turn into some kind of precocious poetry collection, or to become yet another “poet” releasing their stuff on the internet in the hope that they might get a fan base. It’s a bit too personal for that. So on one hand I have the thought that it might do me good and if I get criticism it’s not like I know the person if they’ve commented on here and criticism, bad or good, is always interesting to hear. On the other hand however, it’s a big step and seeing as I have trouble reading my pieces to the class I don’t know if I’m up to putting them on here. I would be grateful for any thoughts?

Maybe I should just put them on here after they’ve been marked and I’ve obviously got full marks and multiple commendations!

First Week.

Just finished my first week of studies at Melbourne Uni (and yes, I am only on campus three days a week). The only problem now is that I have a little dilemma in that I am enrolled in six subjects, but can only take four. I know I am definitely sticking with the Art/Pornography/Blasphemy/Propaganda class. It's brilliant, studying a range of banned and controversial books along with films and artworks, and throughout this asking the all important question "what is art?" to try and form some sort of definition on what should and should not be censored. After our first tutorial there were already enough arguments to see this class is going to be fun! As for my Creative Writing requirement I attended both the Novels class I was originally enrolled into and a new one called Poetry and Poetics. Although both were good classes, the Poetry one seemed far more accessible, and the Novels tutor put me off when he opened with a gigantic list of things he did not like to read about/irritated him. Now, I realise that everyone has likes and dislikes, but in a university class that's meant to make you write creatively, surely you can't dictate what you do and do not like in order to sway our writing? So, I think that will be one of the classes I will be dropping.
As for the historical side that I've tried to incorporate I attended both Colonising History and Historicising the Colonial Past. Both sound pretty identical right? That's what I thought, but apparently not. Colonising History is a broad look at the entire history of Australia and it's colonisation, the effects on it's citizens up to the modern day. Historicising the Colonial Past is directly studying the Indigenous People of Australia and looking at how colonisation has affected them. It's also using both a historical approach and a fictional one, which should be interesting in terms of the oral traditions in the culture and what it means to have their traditional stories written down for outsiders to read. This class is probably going to be what I am going to take, purely because it covers specifically what I want to look at for my dissertation.
My final class is a comparison of Australia and America. I think this class is going to be the most controversial for me purely because in the first lecture the teacher was both useless and came out with some of the most outlandish generalisations I have heard in a long time. From her inability to work out how to plug in a USB to her statements on how "America is qualified by a dream, that means Australia is the nightmare" without anything to back this up I think it's going to be interesting seeing what she comes up with next.
I also had an interesting meeting with the head lecturer of the postgraduate Publishing courses. This was because I had asked whether there was any chance I could take one. One of the convenient factors of being an international student is that most of the uni's are eager to please you, perhaps more eager than your home uni, purely because you are going to be taking their name back to your home uni and telling people whether or not to go there. As a result this meant in America I got to take a graduate class and I figured it was worth a try whilst I was over here. Sadly, it didn't work, but what you don't ask you don't know and I got to have a brilliant meeting with Bryony who told me all about the Australian publishing market, the job buoyancy as a whole, ebooks and ereaders, book prices and basically similarities and differences between the UK and Australia. She also invited me to a series of guest lectures from various heads of different publishers over here, which is only meant to be open to postgrad students so I'm really chuffed with that. So even though I didn't get the class I wanted I still got to meet a very interesting lady who was kind enough to help me out and encourage what I was doing so far. Can't complain at that!
For a first week I think it was one of the more stressful ones, the campus is a lot bigger than expected and going to six classes certainly takes up a lot of your time, but I am settling in a lot more and am starting to really enjoy my time here, even if I am now going to become a poet as opposed to a bestselling novelist!