BA English Literature

The unit uses a workshop format so that each session begins with an exercise/discussion which will introduce ideas about form, metaphor, rhythm etc. In response to set exercises, students will write a poem per fortnight (14 to 40 lines), which will then be marked up by all other students and discussed in detail in class every other week. 

• To widen and deepen students' knowledge of contemporary poetry in English;
• To develop students' critical, editing, communication and writing skills;
• To encourage an interest in, and the practice of, writing and reading contemporary poetry;
• To encourage students to join in productive group-work in a workshop context in order to reflect on their own learning and to assist with the learning processes of other students;
• To provide students with skills that are both related to the discipline and transferable to appropriate professional contexts.

• An intelligent consideration of how poems are made and are made interesting;
• Demonstrate a wide range of independent reading in contemporary poetry;
• To write poems originally and well, and to develop skills for deploying the poetic tool-kit;
• To hone critical assessment
• An understanding of the traditions and applications of a range of poetic devices such as form, rhyme, metre, voice, enjambment, imagery, etc;
• A level of critical and analytical thinking and skills in written expression appropriate to work that will form part of the final degree assessment;
• An ability to formulate opinions about each other's work, and to communicate these in constructive ways;
• Confidence in presenting his, her, their own work;
• Skills with editing and re-drafting, responding positively to feedback received
• An ability to engage in group-work in order to reflect on and develop his, her, their own learning and to assist with the learning processes of other students;
• Skills that are both related to the discipline and transferable to appropriate professional contexts.

Written and face-to-face (upon arrangement)

The Zoo of the New, eds Laird & Paterson, (Penguin Modern Classics, 2018)

Staying Alive, ed Neil Astley, (Bloodaxe, 2002)

The Making of a Poem, eds Boland and Strand (Norton, 2000)

The New Penguin Book of English Verse, ed Paul Keegan (Penguin, 2000)

The Poem is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them, Stephanie Burt, (Belknap, Harvard, 2016)

Why Poetry, Matthew Zapruder, (Harper Collins, 2017)

Stepping Stones, Seamus Heaney & Dennis O’Driscoll (Faber & Faber, 2009)

The Best American Poetry annual publication, Rotating Eds (Scribner)

The Forward Book of Poetry annual publication, Rotating Eds, (Forward Publishing)

Who Reads Poetry: 50 Views from ‘Poetry’ Magazine, eds Sasaki & Share, (University of Chicago Press, 2017)

Other information

Entry to this course is by competition only. Places will be offered on the basis of samples of creative work submitted during the second semester of year 1. Those who have been successful in their application for the course will have been informed before pre-registration.