Poetry and the Imagination (6881.6)

Availability

Availability

This unit is no longer offered. Information may be available for Units in the following years:

• Version 1 - Start Date: 01/01/2006 End Date: 31/12/2006
• Version 2 - Start Date: 01/01/2007 End Date: 31/12/2008
• Version 3 - Start Date: 01/01/2009 End Date: 31/12/2009
• Version 5 - Start Date: 01/01/2011 End Date: 31/12/2012
• Version 4 - Start Date: 01/01/2010 End Date: 31/12/2010
• Version 6 - Start Date: 01/01/2013 End Date: 02/01/2013

Syllabus

This unit focuses on poetic composition. The first half of the lectures will be largely conceptual. It will draw extensively on audio and visual materials from both poetry and the other performative arts. What, we shall ask, is a poetic act? The second half will attend to the music of poetry. Both halves are intended to furnish students with the tools to advance their own compositional practice. Students will be given a weekly list of contemporary and twentieth century poems drawn from across the English speaking world, which they are expected to immerse themselves in prior to the tutorials. Tutorials will provide a space in which students can work upon and present their own compositions. They will also serve as a recital space; every student will be expected to memorise one of the set poems and to recite it to the group.

Learning Outcomes

1. On completion of this subject students will be able to read poetry with enjoyment
2. they will be able to judge critically the value of the poems they come to read in the future
3. they will be aware of the radical gulf between poetry and prose and will have some theories as to its nature
4. they will have produced at least one poem that they are happy to show to others
5. they will be able to recite off-by-heart one of the last century?s most celebrated poems

Contact Hours

Three hours per week.

Prerequisites

None