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Cambridge: the right brain of Oxbridge, the composite capital city of Clever. For eight centuries, this quiet English seat of learning has been one half of historyâEUR(TM)s longest-running academic arms race. When it comes to stockpiling Nobel Prizes, only that Ivy League newcomer, Harvard, has more. This is the mater of all alma maters, with the kind of A-list alumni âEUR" Newton, Cromwell, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Darwin and Hawking âEUR" so famous they donâEUR(TM)t even need first names. This is the city where Wittgenstein split hairs and where Rutherford split the atom; where Watson and Crick discovered the DNA that shapes the human body, and where generations of students push those bodies to their limits. But behind the picture-postcard image of punts, Pimms and polymaths, is another Cambridge: the working East Anglian fenland community that gave us Pink Floyd, Association Football, the Society for Psychical Research, the Cambridge Folk Festival, the Reality Checkpoint âEUR" and the graffiti protestor who sprayed his messages in LatinâEUR¿ Poet and psychogeographer Grahame Davies explores both Cambridges: the world city and the workplace, the glamorous and the gritty; the famous and the forgotten. He discovers thereâEUR(TM)s always more to discover about this extraordinary city âEUR" no matter how clever you are.
About the author
Grahame Davies is a Welsh poet, author, and lyricist who has won numerous prizes, including the Wales Book of the Year Award. He is the author of 17 books in Welsh and English, including:
The Chosen People, a study of the relationship of the Welsh and Jewish peoples;
The Dragon and the Crescent, a study of Wales and Islam; a novel,
Everything Must Change, about the French philosopher Simone Weil; and the popular work of psychogeography,
Real Wrexham. A native of Coedpoeth near Wrexham, now based in Cardiff and London, he has a degree in English from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, and a PhD from Cardiff University. He was awarded an honorary D.Litt from Anglia Ruskin University, and is a Fellow and Governor of Goodenough College, London. He travels internationally as a reader and lecturer, carries out numerous high-profile poetry commissions, and collaborates extensively with musical and visual artists. His poetry has been translated into many languages and has appeared in publications such as:
The Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, Poetry London, the Literary Review in America, Orbis (#136 Spring 2006),
Yearbook of Welsh Writing in English, Absinthe (Michigan, USA, 2007),
Kalliope (Germany, 2009),
Poetry Review, and Everyman's Library Pocket Poets series
Villanelles (2012).
Summary
Cambridge, ancient academic centre and fenland community, science/tech centre and centre of radical religious and political thinking, home to grand museums and agricultural cottages. With an American war cemetery, folk festival, iron age fort, evensong and Reality Checkpoint, it is a place alone as former student Grahame Davies finds on his return.
