Christopher Smith

@christophersmith

University of St Andrews; Executive Chair, Arts & Humanities Research Council; International Champion and Creative Industries Sector Champion UK Research and Innovation All views my own, but none of the poetry.

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Christopher Smith@christophersmith· 14d

This has to be the moment that we come together for all of science, not just some of it, and that means we will all see change and we will all feel its sharp edge. But we need to look, now, past what we may no longer be able to do, to the future we need to build.

Houses enmeshed in a tree; image from the Barbican show In Other Worlds, by Liam Young

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· 14d

and I have reflected with gratitude on the comments of a former St Andrews colleague of mine, Jim Naismith www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-react... And I would note that every Research Council has and will continue to support STFC in various ways, including - as we have - surrendering budget

Finally, I hope there is time to reflect on some of rhetoric that accompanied the consultation. Some comments seemed to attribute malign intent to the current STFC leadership which was entirely unfair. Given where STFC & UKRI found themselves, painful decisions were all that was left. It is easy to demand what must be saved without proposing the means to do so.

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· 14d

Parts of the budget come under particular pressure, including international subscriptions. I hold the international portfolio in UKRI and I believe in our global reach. it's why the Square Kilometre Array (HQ @jodrellbank.bsky.social) is exciting (and additionally it supports equitable funding)

Photograph of telescopes in the desert with title: The World's Largest Radio Telescope

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· 14d

@ukri.org has developed a mission to advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth - and that's what secured a decent settlement in a tough funding round, when many departmental budgets went down www.ukri.org/publications...

Graph of UKRI's split between curiosity driven research, strategic priorities, innovation and enabling and strengthening UK R&D

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· 15d

An encouraging message from Tim Roca, MP for Macclesfield, on continued and alternative funding for @jodrellbank.bsky.social @ukri.org

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· 16d

fully support the significance of the site architecturally and in the history of the architecture of sceince in the twentieth century, and indeed @c20society.bsky.social 's advocacy. @jodrellbank.bsky.social won't close though and they have a strong management plan

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· 16d

And scientists should care about facts. There's a legitimate debate about distribution of funds across the landscape of research and innovation for all of science, including arts and humanities. But the fact is - @jodrellbank.bsky.social isn't closing and I look forward to its future success

The Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK
© Anthony Holloway

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Jun 22

Yes - it's just shot through with superb turns of phrase. I am glad @southbankcentre.bsky.social are celebrating the Festival but we cd have done so much more...

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Mar 21

@pamelaclemit.bsky.social and @rsthomaspoet.bsky.social making it a good #WorldPoetryDay.... allpoetry.com/poem/8519921...

R S Thomas, The Other

There are nights that are so still
that I can hear the small owl
calling
far off and a fox barking
miles away. It is then that I lie
in the lean hours awake listening
to the swell born somewhere in
the Atlantic
rising and falling, rising and
falling
wave on wave on the long shore
by the village that is without
light
and companionless. And the
thought comes
of that other being who is
awake, too,
letting our prayers break on him,
not like this for a few hours,
but for days, years, for eternity.

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Mar 21

The poem is you. #WorldPoetryDay John Ashbery

This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.

Look at it talking to you. You look out a window

Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don’t have it.

You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.

The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.

What’s a plain level? It is that and other things,

Bringing a system of them into play. Play?

Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be

A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,

As in the division of grace these long August days

Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know

It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters.

It has been played once more. I think you exist only

To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren’t there

Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem

Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Feb 15

Superb post as ever from @jntod.bsky.social My evening sorted... @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Feb 14

"And we need all of those things right now to remind us that we can be good-spirited, that we don’t have to make corruption, we don’t have to make greed, we don’t have to make power.” Tracy Emin, soon at @tate.bsky.social

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Feb 14

"Art is to me, now, probably one of the last good things we’ve got left as human beings. There’s something about making something from ourselves which is beautiful and otherworldly as well. .... Tracy Emin

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Feb 13

Once someone threw a stone in the water; those ever-widening circles, even now, are us. Cees Nooteboom, Monk's Eye, tr David Colmer

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Nov 29

We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. Tom Stoppard 1937-2025

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Nov 23

"In London #November isn't a month, it's a state of mind." Antal Szerb, Journey by Moonlight

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Nov 23

Profoundly beautiful account of the history of snow studies, the fragility of snow and the impact of the anthropocene by Sverker Sörlin. Also an appeal for a different way of doing #science

Book cover, Sverker Sörlin, Snö, a detail of snow covering trees and landscape from a painting by Gustav Fjaestad

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Oct 31

and something else was with me in the dark spirits were in the land, but no one's ghost for, had they been there, out behind the yards, I would have seen them in their gloves and scarves dusted with moonshine and frost for the Great Beyond John Burnside for #Halloween

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Sep 16

Robert Redford, 1936-2025

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Aug 30

Experiments in nature; Penone Thoughts in the Roots (Serpentine Gallery); Jarman The Black Paintings (Amanda Wilkinson) "Around you the landscape lies transfigured. Here is the Amen beyond the prayer." Jarman

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Aug 29

Sad to see John Walter’s imaginative artwork coming down from the Thames Tideway site in Bermondsey. Hoping there is a new artwork to come…

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Aug 23

Kiss me, end of summer, on the mouth Tell me you won't go too far away Come back with love upon your shoulders And your weight won't have been in vain Sandro Penna, tr Alexander Booth @wordkunst.bsky.social @seagullbooks.bsky.social

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Aug 13

"Poetry may make nothing happen, but a novel destroyed Hiroshima and without Hiroshima there is no me and these words erase themselves and me with them." Richard Flanagan, Question 7.

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Aug 13

H G Wells, dotd 1946 "Without Rebecca West’s kiss H.G. Wells would not have run off to Switzerland to write a book in which everything burns, and without H.G. Wells’s book Leo Szilard would never have conceived of a nuclear chain reaction...

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Aug 3

If you find your way to the Royal Academy's provocative Kiefer / van Gogh show, look out for Lesley Chamberlain's superb A Shoe Story: van Gogh, the Philosophers and the West "The capacity of #art to protect and protest, to stand on real ground"

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Aug 3

The Edward Burra show @tate.bsky.social has gathered attention for his striking depictions of France and Spain, but in light of current conversations below this 1963 depiction of violence against a straw man resonates. Burra was himself in many ways an outsider through his sexuality and invalidity.

Edward Burra The Straw Man, men violent punch and kick a straw man beneath a railway bridge. A woman and child walk away in the background.

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Jul 5

Over the sunstruck, drystone wall we were ambushed by the sway and scent of a July meadow Moya Cannon, Monet in Árann, from Bunting's Honey, a beautiful collection from @carcanet.bsky.social with a few thoughts from me anatomiesofpower.wordpress.com/2025/07/05/c...

cover of Moya Cannon's Bunting's Honey, with an image, The Pink Bush by Joseph Quilty

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Jul 5

From Moya Cannon's Bunting's Honey.

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Jul 3

Current reading. History rhymes, sometimes too well.

Cover of Beverley Gage, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century

Christopher Smith@christophersmith· Jun 25

"This transference of awe-inspiring unknowability from God to the ancient lands of the United States had helped to justify America's national parks. These secular Edens cleansed the human mind & spirit with their billion-year old landscapes." Caroline Winterer @princetonupress.bsky.social