50180 Culture and Poetics

This subject focuses on theories of language, theories of production and invention and ideas of the poetic. In part this question is studied historically, in particular considering issues such as the nature of voice, sign and structure inherited through Romantic, modernist and post-structuralist paradigms. Other core models such as the concept and practice of experiment, competing theories of the imagination and the influence of digital aesthetics may be studied. The subject asks questions about the meaning of contemporary definitions of reading and writing and how subjective experience is represented within current writing systems. Stressing the importance of the poem, the works of a number of contemporary writers are considered and students are asked to respond critically to debates and practices in contemporary poetics.

In 2008, a number of relevant critical areas will be established in the opening weeks of the class and explored in relation to selected poems and other writings. After considering key themes in the contemporary theorisation of the poem (in particular aspects of voice, subject, subjectivity, self-reflexivity and philosophical questions to do with epistemological limits of language and meaning) the lecture and tutorial series focus on central questions to do with contemporaneity, locality and environment in the work of recent poets and writers. Among a number of contemporary figures, the work of the American poets, Jorie Graham and Mark Doty and the Australian poets Lionel Fogarty, Sam Wagan Watson and others will figure.

Typical availability

Autumn semester, City campus