Open University 40th Anniversary Poem

It wasn’t just the heat swirling round Museum of London on Sunday June 28th as the Open University in London marked 40 years inspiring learning. It was the warmth and magical mystery generated by a day of celebration, featuring a performance of the critically acclaimed Rockford’s Rock Opera, a rollicking environmentalist musical, with comedian Steve Punt and musician Matthew Sweetapple, and introduced by London Regional Director Barbara Stephens.

Then the great songs, graphics and sound effects gave way to an expectant hush before the fabulously understated tones of Wondermentalist poet Matt Harvey (pictured), who performed the long-awaited première of his thrilling, rousing  paean to the Open University...

Open University 40th Anniversary Poem

OU, we owe you
everybody wants to know you
even those who used to doubt you
can’t speak well enough about you
they say: your founders were fearless
your students are tireless
your  tutors are peerless
your media wireless
 

you’re the College of the Air
your reception’s everywhere

a twinkle in J C Stobart’s eye
that Michael Young could not let lie
that Jennie Lee tenaciously
made manifest reality
they’d an inkling lower income
doesn’t lead to slower thinking
so now some of us are inching
by degrees towards degrees

the never-quite-made-it or told-they-were stupid
the started-but-faded or sidetracked-by-cupid
the just-need-encouragement, gluttons-for-nourishment
the people whose talent was far too well-hidden
the told-that-we-couldn’t-or-shouldn’t-so-didn’t
the course-interrupted, the quite-frankly-corrupted
deep knowledge questers,  bereft empty-nesters,
bright-eyed early-risers, complete self-surprisers

…who now all have fuller foreheads
a more complex frontal cortex

for nourishing our neurons
OU, we owe you

in time that’s borrowed, bought and stolen
schedules staggered, bent and swollen
time that’s snatched & time that’s smuggled
every minute of it juggled
we give up bingo, daytime telly
computer games and social drinking
to read Bronte Proust and Shelley
stay at home and do binge-thinking
every sacrifice worth making
now we’re swapping sleep for waking
waking up to our potential
to explore worlds once forbidden us
 – it’s why on the residential
 things can get a bit libidinous –

for being so inspiring
that you get our neurons firing
and spontaneously re-wiring
OU, we owe you

the wide-eyed wonder-graduate
the famished hunger-graduate…
jotting reading and absorbing
finding empty hours and tables
sending subtle signs to strangers
‘don’t disturb me I am dangerous
I have got a little learning…’

…and it’s not just about earning
though yes, we’re more employable
but when we go out on the pull
we talk a better class of bull
and if we’re not successful
we are much more philosophical

for nourishing our neurons
buffing up our self-assurance
and for being so inspiring
that you get our neurons firing
and spontaneously re-wiring
OU, we owe you

and OU here’s hoping
you always stay Open
for your enterprise is noble
and expanded frontal lobal
may your outreach programme snowball
from Chernobyl down to Yeovil
from Shanghai to Sampford Peverell
may your future now be global
and may some of your post-graduates
win prizes that are Nobel
if a university could get an honorary degree
you wouldn’t get one
 – you’d get several

OU, BSc, BA Hons, Phd
we raise a half-full glass to you
from every social class to you
say ‘may the gods look after you’
and
OU, we owe you

Happy Anniversary*

Matt Harvey

(*now can I have a bursary?)

Useful links:

• The OU in London
• For more on Matt Harvey, click here

Credit: photo by Robert Lawler