EN34020 - POETRY BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT-UK POETRY SINCE 70S-REMAPPING

Module Identifier	EN34020
Module Title	POETRY BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT-UK POETRY SINCE 70S-REMAPPING
Academic Year	2002/2003
Co-ordinator	Dr Peter T Barry
Semester	Semester 2
Course delivery	Seminars / Tutorials	20 Hours Seminar. 10 x 2 hrs
Assessment	Semester Assessment	Continuous Assessment: 2 essays (2,500 words each)	100%
	Supplementary Assessment	Resubmit any failed elements and/or make good any missing elements.

Brief description

This module offers the opportunity to look at a range of contemporary British poetry, going well beyond the usual canonical boundaries and exploring work which is controversial, innovative and unassimilated. The module by-passes the best-known landmarks - Larkin, Heaney, Hughes - and asks you to boldly go into hitherto unmapped territory. It takes for granted the fact that you probably find poetry reading quite difficult but also assumes that you are just as keen to encounter new and challenging work in poetry, as in, say, film or pictorial art. The module offers 'poetry with an edge', and poetry with a strong contemporary flavour (it's a daffodil-free zone). It offers reading strategies for poetry, especially for poetry of an innovative kind. It seeks to remove it from the 'page vacuum' and look at it in its various contexts, such as: the contemporary art scene, the processes of small-press publishing, the dynamics of reading and performance, the influences of 'alternative' cultures and lifestyles, and various networks of regional and political allegiances.

Content

A. BECOMING A POETRY READER

1. 'Border Countries' Carol Ann Duffy (Penguin Modern Poets, Vol. 2)*
Uses a specific reading technique (set out in a hand-out document entitled 'Working with a Poem') as a starter. Also considers what determines the placing of a poet in canonical territory or in the 'exclusion zone'.

2. 'Outside History?' Eavan Boland (Penguin Modern Poets, Vol. 2)*
How does a woman poet inscribe herself in a masculine and national tradition of poetry? Does this major Irish poet suggest a way forward for UK women poets?

3. 'LIP' Poetry - Being a Woman Being a Poet:
Linguistically Innovative Poetries from Carlyle Reedy, Geraldine Monk, and Maggie O'Sullivan. The most extreme forms of experimentation in poetry have been one of the distinct realms of women's poetry. How do readers get into these performance and visual texts?

B. NEW CONSTITUENCIES

4. 'Have You Been Here Long?' - Black British Poetry
Selections from Kamu Brathwaite, James Berry ('Lucy' poems), Fred D'Aguiar ('Mama Dot' poems), Jean 'Binta' Breeze, John Agard, (Some audio-taped material will be used)

5-6 'Planet Alice'
Making For Planet Alice: New Women Poets, ed. Maura Dooley (Bloodaxe Books, 1997)* A lively and outspoken anthology of women poets who made their reputations in the 1990s.

7. The 'New Generation' Poets: or 'Oh No, Not the New Rock and Roll Again'
Poetry as a commercial 'product' - the 'moment' of 1994, as seen in a 'Southbank Show' Video.

C. PAPER CITIES

8. 'Birmingham's What I Think With'
Roy Fisher, The Dow Low Drop: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 1996)* These sessions consider the laid-back urban annotations of Roy Fisher's Birmingham poems (with audio-tape material)

9. 'The Hard Lyric' - A Liverpool Poet
Matt Simpson, An Elegy for the Galosherman: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 1990)* Another poet with street-cred (rather than country-lane cred). The contemporary poetry of the city.

10. 'Barefoot in King's Cross' - Visions of London
Poetry which re-writes London as a web of multi-layered, historical, cultural, & mystical deposits. These include Ian Sinclair's Lud Heat, Aidan Dun's Vale Royal [taped extracts].

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

TEXTS FOR PURCHASE, INDICATED WITH AN ASTERISK IN THE WEEK-BY-WEEK LISTINGS ABOVE, ARE ALSO LISTED BELOW. OTHER USEFUL ITEMS ARE AS FOLLOWS:

(1) POETRY ANTHOLOGIES

SIMON ARMITAGE AND ROBERT CRAWFORD, EDS. PENGUIN BOOK OF POETRY [UK & US, POST 1950] (PENGUIN 1998)
RICHARD CADDELL AND PETER QUARTERMAIN, EDS. OTHER BRITISH AND IRISH POETRY SINCE 1970 (WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1999)
MICHAEL HULSE, ET AL, EDS. THE NEW POETRY (BLOODAXE 1993)
ANDREW MOTION AND BLAKE MORRISON, EDS. PENGUIN BOOK OF CONTEMPORARY BRITISH POETRY (PENGUIN 1982)
SEAN O'BRIEN, ED. THE FIREBOX; POETRY IN BRITAIN AND IRELAND AFTER 1945 (PICADOR 1998)
MAGGIE O'SULLIVAN, ED. OUT OF EVERYWHERE; INNOVATIVE POETRIES BY WOMEN (REALITY STREET EDITIONS 1996)
IAIN SINCLAIR, ED. CONDUCTORS OF CHAOS; A POETRY ANTHOLOGY (PICADOR, 1996)

(2) POETRY CRITICISM

JAMES ACHESON, CONTEMPORARY BRITISH POETRY; ESSAYS IN THEORY AND CRITICISM & ROMANA HUK, (STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS 1996)
PETER BARRY, INNER CITIES: WRITING THE CITY IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH POETRY, (MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS 2000)
DAVID BUCHBINDER, CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY AND THE READING OF POETRY (MACMILLAN, 1991)
A. EASTHOPE & JOHN O.THOMPSON, EDS CONTEMPORARY POETRY MEETS MODERN THEORY, (HARVESTER, 1991)
R. G. HAMPSON & PETER BARRY, EDS., NEW BRITISH POETRIES: THE SCOPE OF THE POSSIBLE, (MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS 1993)
ROD MENGHAM, VANISHING POINTS: ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY , (MACMILLAN, 1993)
SEAN O'BRIEN, DEREGULATED MUSE: ESSAYS ON CONTEMPORARY BRITISH AND IRISH POETRY, (BLOODAXE 1995)
DENISE RILEY, ED., POETS ON WRITING: BRITAIN 1970-1991, (MACMILLAN 1992)
ALAN ROBINSON, INSTABILITIES IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH POETRY (MACMILLAN 1988)
LIZ YORKE, IMPERTINENT VOICES, SUBVERSIVE STRATEGIES IN CONTEMPORARY, WOMEN'S POETRY, (ROUTLEDGE 1991)

Reading Lists

Books
** Should Be Purchased
Penguin Modern Poets Volume 2. Penguin
Maura Dooley (ed). (1996) Making for Planet Alice: New Women Poets. Bloodaxe Books
Roy Fisher. (1996) The Dow Low Drop: New and Selected Poems. Bloodaxe Books
Matt Simpson. (1990) An Elegy for the Galosherman: New and Selected Poems. Bloodaxe Books