| Module Identifier |
WR30420 |
| Module Title |
TRADITIONAL POETIC FORMS |
| Academic Year |
2005/2006 |
| Co-ordinator |
Dr Damian Walford Davies |
| Semester |
Intended for use in future years |
| Next year offered |
N/A |
| Next semester offered |
N/A |
| Other staff |
Dr Matthew C Francis |
| Pre-Requisite |
WR10220 |
| Course delivery |
Seminars / Tutorials | 10 x 2 hour seminar/workshops |
| Assessment |
| Assessment Type | Assessment Length/Details | Proportion |
|---|
| Semester Assessment | Two portfolios of writing, each with a critical Commentary: 2,500 words each. | 100% |
| Supplementary Assessment | Resubmit any failed elements and/or make good any missing elements. Where this involves re-submission of work, a new topic must be selected. | |
|
Learning outcomes
On completion of this module, students should typically be able to:
1. demonstrate knowledge of the most significant forms and conventions of poetic writing in English;
2. demonstrate an ability to write poetry in a range of forms, using contemporary diction and invoking a contemporary context;
3. demonstrate an awareness of the wider cultural issues raised by contemporary use of these forms;
4. demonstrate a self-reflexive awareness of their own writing practice;
5. demonstrate an ability to express themselves clearly in writing.
Aims
This module aims:
1. to inform students of some of the important traditions of writing poetry in English;
2. to build on their reading and study of poetry in the Core literature modules;
3. to encourage students to experiment with a range of poetic forms in a modern register, using contemporary diction.
Brief description
Attention to the formal structures and effects of English verse is a significant aspect of our analysis, understanding and appreciation of poetry. However, it is an aspect that is often neglected. This module offers just such a focus.
This module introduces students to a number of traditional poetic forms and to some of the most significant conventions of poetic writing in English in order to build on their reading and understanding of poetic form in the core literature modules. As a module offered within the English and Writing degree scheme, it requires students to experiment with various forms and discuss their work in practical workshop sessions. Crucially, students will be required to use contemporary contexts and a modern linguistic register. What happens when these traditional forms - often associated with particular historical periods - are put to modern use? How does the use of contemporary discourse / subject-matter highlight, interrogate and subvert the conventions associated with these forms? What ironies and surprises emerge from a contemporary engagement with them?
Our ten sessions will thus involve both a broadly theoretical discussion of the wider (political, social, gender, etc.) issues dramatised by these forms (and by our 'rewritings') and practical experimentation.
Content
Seminar Programme
Lyric Forms - `The Ghost of Oral Poetry'
Exercise: Write a poem that imitates one of the forms among the examples given, but not necessarily the theme.
The Sonnet - `Petitionary, Gendered'
Exercise: Write 1) a Shakespearean sonnet expressing your profound dislike of something AND 2) a Petrarchan love sonnet to an unusual object.
Blank Verse - `The sound our sentences would make / If only we could leave them to themselves'
Exercise: Write a passage of blank verse on the theme of a `fall'.
Heroic Couplets - `Classical, Cold'?
Exercise: Write two short passages in heroic couplets - one satirical, the other (sincerely) elegiac.
Forms and Repetition (Villanelle, Triolet, Rondeau, Blues) - `Play it Again'
Exercise: Write a poem in one of these forms, using contemporary diction.
Ottava Rima and Satire - `Byronic, Comic, Ironic'
Exercise: Write a sequence of satirical stanzas in ottava rima on a prescribed theme/ person.
Haiku - `my funeral coat, / unlike the magpie's,/ green with age'
Exercise: Write five haiku - three from personal experience; one based on a painting / art objects; and one `distilled' from longer poetic or prose descriptions which will be provided.
Narrative Verse and Ballads - `It is an ancient mariner . . .'
Exercise: Write a short ballad narrating a contemporary story.
Free Verse - `Never Totally 'Free'
Exercise: Write a piece of free verse on a prescribed topic.
Pattern Poems - `Angel Wings, Altars and Tombstones'
Exercise: Write a poem on a prescribed visual pattern.
Reading Lists
Books
** Should Be Purchased
Mark Strand and Eavan Boland (eds.) (2001) The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms
New York and London: W. W. Norton 0393321789
Sandy Brownjohn (2002) The Poet's Craft: A Handbook of Rhythm, Metre and Verse
Hodder and Stoughton 0340802928
** Recommended Background
Philip Hobsbaum (1996) Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form (New Critical Idiom series)
London: Routledge
Derek Attridge (1996) Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction
Cambridge: Cambrideg University Press
Thomas Carper & Derek Attridge (2003) Metre and Meaning
London: Routledge
Paul Fussell (1979) Poetic Meter and Poetic Form
New York: Random House
C. O. Hartman (1980) Free Verse
Princeton: Princeton University Press
Dick HIggins (1987) Pattern Poetry: Guide to an Unknown Literature
New York: State University of New York Press
John Hollander (1985) Vision and Resonance: Two Senses of Poetic Form
New Haven: Yale University Press
Nigel Jenkins (2002) blue
Aberystwyth: Planet Books
Milton Klonsky (ed.) (1975) Speaking Pictures: A Gallery of Pictorial Poetry from the Sixteenth Century to the Present
New York: Harmony Books
David Lehman (ed.) (1996) Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms (2nd Edition)
2. University of Michigan Press
Mary Ellen Solt (ed.) (1967) Concrete Poetry: A World View
New York: Indiana University Press
W. D. Snodgrass (2001) De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong
Graywolf Press
Timothy Steele (1990) Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt Against Meter
Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press
Mark Strand & Eavan Boland (eds.) (2001) The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms
New York: W. W. Norton
Lewis Turco (1999) The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics
University Press of New England
John Hollander (1989) Rhyme's Reasons: A Guide to English Verse
Yale University Press
Notes
This module is at CQFW Level 6