_Session 1. The Formal Poem.
Students will be asked to write a poem using either a traditional form (sonnet, villanelle, blank verse etc), or less orthodox formal constraints (syllabics, half-rhymes, patterns of alliteration etc). Discussion will focus on the possibilities of an `outside-in' approach to poetry, which works from form to content rather than vice versa. Examples will be taken from modern and contemporary poets who have worked in orthodox forms (eg, Larkin, Heaney) and less orthodox ones (eg, Marianne Moore, Muldoon).

_Session 2. The Imagistic Poem.
Students will be asked to write a poem based on images rather than narrative or argument. Discussion will focus on the show-don'r-tell approach to poetry and its roots in Imagism. Examples may include the Imagists, William Carlos Williams and the various interpretations of haiku.

_Session 3. The Narrative Poem.
Students will be asked to write a poem which tells a story. Discussion will focus on the narrative potential of poetry and the differences between poetic and prose narrative. The dramatic monologue will also be covered. Examples may include Frost, Auden and contemporary exponents such as Armitage and Duffy.

_Session 4. The Self-Reflexive Poem.
Students will be asked to write a poem which explores its own textuality. Discussion will focus on the postmodern interest in reflexive forms and its relation to critical theory. Examples of self-reflexive poetry may include work by Wallace Stevens and W.S. Graham, as well as recent British and American poetry in the postmodern tradition.

_Session 5. The Poetic Sequence.
Students will be asked to write a short sequence of poems. Discussion will focus on the different sequential structures available to poets and the way individual poems can change when brought into proximity with others. Examples of sequences may range from Yeats's Crazy Jane poems and `Meditations in Time of Civil War' to Berryman's Dream Songs and looser sequences such as Plath's bee poems.