Demystifying Poetry

What is the course about?

This one-day in-college literature course focuses on exploring poetry and giving you the skills to understand the techniques that it uses to create emotional affect in its readers. We will be reading a wide and diverse range of verse from the canonical to the lesser known including modern and contemporary poetry. Throughout, we will be analysing how the poem works to create meanings through the use of sound, tone and mood, voice, and choice of language. We will additionally be investigating how poetic form and structure affects what the poem can do, and how figurative language and imagery add depth, richness and complexity to poetic texts. Finally, we will be attentive to references and allusions, and the way poetry speaks back to previous verse creating a productive dialogue across times, cultures and gender.

Biography for Linda Grant:
Linda’s research and writing encompass classical Greek and Latin, and Renaissance literature, especially poetry. She has published extensively on discourses of love, desire and the erotic; the history of the body; and classical reception, and poetry. With in interests in women’s writing, in literature in translation and in contemporary autofiction, Linda has taught in both Classics and English departments at Birkbeck, Queen Mary, and Royal Holloway. She is currently writing a book entitled Shakespeare’s Bodies, and is researching a monograph on mythology and modernism focusing on female authors. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

What will we cover?

We will focus on close reading of the selected texts, or extracts from longer poems, with prompts and guidance from the tutor. The emphasis throughout will be on personal and subjective readings of the verse to reflect the openness of poetry that cannot be restricted to a single ‘correct’ reading.

Each mini session during the day will focus on one or more technical aspects of verse such as rhyme, rhythm, voice, persona, mood, lexicon, form, imagery, conceits, allegory, allusions, and we will explore them through poetic examples drawn from across the range of poetry in English such as Shakespeare, Byron, William Blake, Emily Bronte, Sylvia Plath, Carol Ann Duffy, Margaret Atwood, Kei Miller. We will encounter the many moods that poetry can articulate from the tragic to contemplative, the bawdy to comic. We will be especially attentive to the multiple voices that may be present in a poetic text and examine how imagery and allusions may work to either reinforce or subvert the surface meaning of the poem.

What will I achieve?
By the end of this course you should be able to...

Read poetry with confidence and enjoyment. You will gain a sense of the range of ‘tools’ that poets may use to create their verse and how they allow an individual poem to place itself within the wider history of literature. You will be able to analyse the components of poetry to think productively about the voice of the text and how language and other technical choices affect the meaning(s) that readers may take from a poem.

What level is the course and do I need any particular skills?

This course is for anyone who wants to read, understand and enjoy poetry and you do not need to have any prior literary experience. We will be discussing the basic building blocks and tools of poetry throughout the day with plenty of time for exploring verse examples in a friendly and supportive setting. Close reading prompts will give you a way into each poem and group work will enable you to see how different readers bring their own experience to create meanings from verse. All you need to bring is an open mind and a willingness to engage with the poetry we will be exploring.

How will I be taught, and will there be any work outside the class?

As this is a one-day course there will be no preparation needed and handouts will be given to you throughout the day. You will be taught through a combination of tutor introductions, small group work, and full class discussions. This will be an interactive day so come along ready to share your ideas.

Are there any other costs? Is there anything I need to bring?

The tutor will provide all materials. All you need to bring is a notebook and pen for your own notes – and a willingness to participate.

When I've finished, what course can I do next?

This tutor will be teaching a longer follow-on course, Gender, Desire and the Body, code HLT355 in July. Look for other poetry courses under History, Culture and Writing/Literature/Poetry on our website at www.citylit.ac.uk.