Robin Hood Country: A Fulbright to Nottingham

Jason Schneiderman, English

What I remember most is the clouds. Nottingham has the most amazing clouds. I kept thinking, “Oh, now I understand Wordsworth,” even if none of the clouds looked particularly lonely. I arrived at the height of summer when the days seemed to last forever, but as the winter came on, extended twilights would start at around two or three in the afternoon and go on for hours. The view from my office was an uninterrupted field stretching off into the distance, and I often found myself standing at the window watching the light. Though as it got colder, the radiator next to the window was an added bonus.

I didn’t realize how misaligned the US and UK semesters are, so I arrived in July, thinking I would have a few weeks before people returned to campus. Instead, I arrived for graduation and had the campus more of less to myself until the fall semester arrived in late September. Nottingham is very much a college town, and the city seemed to fill and empty alongside the semester schedule.

Because of the way the Fulbright had come about, I ended up with very few obligations at the university. I had to deliver two lectures, one on my research and one on my research methods. My lecture on the ambiguities of the second person in English language poetry and fiction was well received, but delivered on Zoom during some sort of accreditation visit. I published the lecture as an article shortly after in the American Poetry Review. For the lecture on research methods, I was asked to include an overview of my career as well as discussion of how to publish, so that lecture ended up being a bit all over the place, but I was glad to have a chance to reflect on how my critical and creative work do and do not overlap. I only met with students twice, but they were extremely receptive, and after a visit to a class on the sonnet, one student wrote a Schneiderman Sonnet (a form I tried to pioneer in the early 2000s that involves homophones) that was very impressive, and later won a British poetry prize.

Usually a Fulbright is fairly site specific; the point is to do research that can only be done in that particular place. But because my initial proposal to teach Creative Writing Studies in Finland had morphed into lecturing on the intersection of art and science in Russia, the invasion of Ukraine left me a fellowship orphan, and I ended up in Nottingham researching non-metrical theories of the poetic line, building on a previous article I had published. I spent most of my days in my office and the library, but I made very little headway. Fortunately, the University of Michigan Press accepted a book of essays for publication, and between my book of poems (which just came out in August) and my book of essays (Spring 2025), I needed most of my time to prepare those manuscripts.

The University of Nottingham is a gorgeous campus. Nottingham is best known for Robin Hood, but it was also the lace capital of the world during the height of the industrial era, and it is where Jesse Boot isolated ibuprofen and started the Boot’s Pharmacy chain. Boot donated 35 acres of land to the school, so there are massive fields and ponds, with rolling meadows and hidden gardens. The art museum on campus is far superior to the lone modern art museum in Nottingham, and I loved walking past the rowing pond to see their shows.

The city of Nottingham is an odd place, with poor urban planning in general, but anchored by a beautiful town square that is often home to various fairs, though often with the same booths over and over. At the Christmas fair, the British Fudge Company had three booths in a space about the size of Bryant Park. All summer there was a kind of beach set up in the town square, with a wading pond that looked less than sanitary. The University is sandwiched between the city proper and a small town called Beeston that looks like Billy Elliot might run into the street at any moment. When I was staying in Beeston, I joked that I was so far in Mike Leigh country that I expected to run into Sally Hawkins at any moment.

Notthingham takes great pride in its three major writers: Lord Byron, D.H. Lawrence, and Allan Sillitoe. There are plaques to them around town, along with one for the office where J.M. Barrie once worked for a newspaper. There is an independent bookstore called Five Leaves that I frequented, and where I had my subscription to the Times Literary Supplement delivered. Nottingham’s architecture is remarkable, although often poorly preserved or landmarked. Art deco gates with ginkgo-leaf motifs remained in place at the train station and at the original Boots, which is now a Zara. Because of Nottingham’s abundance of sandstone, man-made caves were dug out by prehistoric man, and some buildings are a combination of cave and wall. Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, one of Nottingham’s three establishments claiming to be the oldest pub in England has sandstone walls that rub away if you touch them. Nottingham was at the boundary between Roman-occupied England and the Anglo-Saxons, and one office building has a window that lets you see the remaining wall at which the Romans and Britons would meet to trade, but you have to really look for it. There’s a stunning tour of the caves beneath the city that have served as dwellings, tanneries, storage, and bomb shelters. It’s also where the Luddites organized and hid out, in their opposition to industrialization of the lace trade. But to enter, you have to go through a skate park beneath train tracks and open an unmarked door. Newstead Abbey, the ancestral home of Lord Byron is a bit more accessible, and my questions about the Shelleys got me and my friends a more or less guided tour.

I wish I’d had more time (and money!) to travel. I made it to the Orkney Islands, where Victor Frankenstein puts together the female monster that he does not bring to life. It was bleak and windswept, and I went in the dead of winter when the sun set at 3pm. It reminded me of Provincetown in the winter, and I actually loved being there and would love to go back. The Orkneys is also a place where many of the British runes have been found, and the museums there answered questions that had come up in my research about futhark and futhorc. I did end up going to London frequently, either for professional or personal reasons, and I saw some great theater (which Nottingham did not have in great quantities).

My social life—and not knowing anyone in Nottingham, I needed to assemble one quickly—centered on the Nottingham Front Runners, a new chapter of the international LGBT running club that announced its formation at Nottingham Pride the weekend I arrived. Every Tuesday night, I ran a 5k with the club, and they became dear friends. I ran in my NFR gear with the New York Front Runners and sent pics to all my friends. I also joined a knitting circle, and a synagogue. Just before I left, I delivered a presentation on contemporary Jewish poetry at the synagogue and gave a sold out reading at Five Leaves. I was sad to leave, but I have to admit I missed teaching and I missed New York.

While I was in the UK, I kept wondering if they really had better clouds, or if I just hadn’t noticed them enough in the US. The answer is both. I haven’t used the word “gloaming” since I got back—we just don’t have the same long twilights, though I do love the golden hour in New York. I see our clouds with fresh eyes, and I think about the clouds in England. I won’t go back to Nottingham until I have a reason to, but I’m hoping that reason arises soon, before I have to make one up.

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