Module Directory

This ten week module in creative writing will explore poetry from its origins to the present by asking students to engage with both traditional forms and recent experiments. By taking a long view of poetry it will explore the way in which poetry changes over time, migrating from one place to another, one form to another, from cave wall to bark, to page, to body, to building, to advertising billboard, to electronic media.

Contemporary work will be explored which both engages with and departs from traditional forms of poetry, including work that extends the boundaries and the language and forms of poetry towards actions, non-poetic language, and word-games. While the history of poetry might seem to demonstrate that the best poets – Mallarmé, Maxwell – are essentially unemployable, poetry and its utilitarian functions in advertising and related fields connecting to employability will be a central feature.

Teaching itself, as far as possible, will itself be experimental – including the gathering of feathers and objects, five-minute lectures, and field work – attempting to perform the "restrangement" that underpins much poetic activity.

The aims of this module are:

• To introduce students of creative writing to a variety of poetry


• To conceptions of poetry through analysis and practice that extend the norms of mainstream poetic practice, including Ice Age poetry, poetic actions, word-games, curses and spells


• To introduce the students to traditional forms, such as the sestina and epithalamium


• To explore how writers have challenged traditional forms and conceptions of poetry, and taken forms from the page to the body and to walls and advertising billboards

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Display a detailed knowledge of poetic form.


2. Show understanding of some of the main ways in which poetry has developed and changed throughout its history.


3. Evidence how their own poetry is informed by the poetries of the past and the present.


4. Demonstrate an ability to explore poetry practically, engaging with a variety of approaches.

Anticipated teaching delivery: Students will be taught by a combination of 5-minute lecture, seminar, workshops, practical writing exercises, and writing experiments. This will take place over a ten week period in which there will be scheduled 2 hour seminars.