Happy 70th Birthday Bob from Bristol

Sunday Hay-on-Wye, yesterday Somerset - Wells Cathedral (awesome) and East Coker (T.S. Eliot's Quartet and resting place) - in the sunshine.

Old men ought to be explorers

Here or there does not matter (Eliot)

And today?

I'm still on the road

Heading for another joint (Dylan)

At the Bristol University Conference The Seven Ages of Bob Dylan to mark his 70th birthday. It's a great lineup of speakers, each apparently speaking for about 20 minutes, and promises to be very enjoyable, thoughtful and probably controversial as well.

Prize for best title probably goes to Dr. Richard Brown (Leeds) for The Dylanesque and the Dylennium. Professor Neil Corcoran (Liverpool) who has written extensively about Irish poetry and poets will speak on Dylan Now and Then: Notes and Queries. The day ends with a keynote address by Michael Gray entitled Our Back Pages.

There is also a poetry recital by Lavinia Greenlaw and Mark Ford at lunchtime. The Conference is mentioned in the Telegraph in this article.

Thousand of media stories about Dylan today. Many reporting the Dylan heroin story which as usual with such packaged media snippets is not quite as simple as it is reported. This is Bob Dylan after all. See this Rolling Stone comment.