Gwybodaeth Modiwlau

Teaching will be delivered through three components: lectures, seminars, and workshops (exact ratio given below). The lectures will introduce students to a new technique or consideration each week, which will then be further explored in the seminars, by means of discussion and exercises. The fortnightly workshops are geared towards assignments: students will be asked to submit work in advance, which will then be circulated among the group for reading, before the discussion in the workshop.


Outline of lecture and seminar topics:

1. What is a poem?
Lecture: Following on from the first semester module Introduction to Fiction, this session will explore what makes a poem different from prose writing, in terms of theme and form. Discussion of the differences will highlight some basic formal considerations, including line breaks, caesura, and enjambment, building technical knowledge from the outset. The concept of linking subject and form will be introduced. Common preconceptions and anxieties will be addressed.
Seminar: With their tutor, students will have an opportunity to ask questions resulting from the first lecture and to discuss their experiences of reading and writing poetry to date. An in-class writing exercise to assess the formal and thematic implications of where one places a line break and use of punctuation will reinforce the ideas of the lecture.

2. Patterns
Lecture: This lecture will focus on the importance of sound and the role of patterns in developing this, exploring sound patterns (alliteration, assonance), linguistic patterns (syllabics), and repetition.
Seminar: Students will discuss the different effects of each of the patterns introduced in the lecture and consider further examples. They will develop use of each in writing exercises.


3. Basic structures
Lecture: This lecture will consider the over-arching structure of a poem, introducing students to some common approaches that will help them shape their work, including lists, repetition of the first line, letters, and sets of instructions.
Seminar: Students will discuss the approaches outlined in the lecture and begin work on forming their own poetic structures.

4. Imagery
Lecture: This lecture will deal with the role of imagery (and, in a wider sense, defamiliarisation) in poetry. By focusing on using the senses, this lecture will encourage students to see imagery as a skill grounded in close observation and perception, with the power to transform a reader’s view.
Seminar: Students will put into practise the ideas outlined in the lecture by taking everyday items (e.g. kitchen implements) and describing them afresh using imagery.

5. Metre
Lecture: This lecture will outline the stress-based nature of the English language and its relationship with poetry, an area of writing which students find difficult. The lecture will demonstrate the role stress plays in musicality and determining emphasis, focusing on iambic pentameter.
Seminar: As students find the concept of stress challenging, the seminar will give them the opportunity to ask questions and to practice writing lines of iambic pentameter with help from the tutor.

6. Rhyme
Lecture: This lecture will develop students’ understanding of the diverse and subtle ways to use rhyme, covering full and half rhymes, as well as where one can place rhyme in a poem (internal and end-stop), and rhyme schemes. This will be framed within a wider understanding of the purpose of rhyme and why it appeals to the human ear. Through the use of examples, students will be encouraged to consider the differences between the effective and the detrimental use of rhyme.
Seminar: Working with their tutor, students will experiment with the different forms of rhyme outlined in the lecture, reading aloud to hear the subtle echoes of half rhymes and the impact of where they are placed in a poem.

7. Free verse
Lecture: This will outline the history of the form and its role in contemporary poetry, as well as exploring its seemingly paradoxical name: is free verse really ‘free’ from formal considerations? Its flexibility will be considered, but so will the roles metre and rhyme play in writing good free verse.
Seminar: Students will consider the advantages and disadvantages of free verse for their writing, in terms of determining appropriate themes and making an impact. All the skills so far covered by the module will be useful in approaching this seemingly ‘free’ form.

8. Lyric poetry and the dramatic monologue
Lecture: The first of three weeks on basic shaping genres, this lecture will introduce students to the dramatic monologue. The role of an implied addressee will be discussed, as will creating an intimate relationship with the reader. Students will be asked to consider the role of the poet in the creation of a thrown voice: who is speaking here? Notions of autobiography (often attached to a lyric I) and the use of fiction in poetry will be raised.
Seminars: Through in-class writing exercises students will try writing a dramatic monologue from the point of view of a famous person, the identity of which must be guessed by the other members of the group.

9. Praise and invective
Lecture: Like the dramatic monologue, these genres are determined by tone and content rather than the technical constraints required by a sonnet. They provide a sense of structure without being intimidating. Examples of both the praise and the invective will be considered and their fundamental differences discussed.
Seminar: Students will practise the tone required for each of these forms and discuss potential subjects for their own poems.

10. Odes and elegies
Lecture: This lecture looks at two forms which have roots in classical tradition but which remain popular with contemporary poets. As with the lecture on praise and invective, there will be a discussion of their differences but also, in this case, their similarities.
Seminar: Students will practise the tone required for each of these forms and discuss potential subjects for their own poems.