50224 Poetry Workshop

Handbook description

This subject offers students the opportunity to develop advanced skills in writing poetry. Students write extensively and read widely in a variety of genres of contemporary and modern poetry. As well as working in traditional formats, students may also be encouraged to explore performance-oriented and experimental aspects of poetry. In the context of writing and workshopping, students enhance not only their creative skills as poets but also their critical ability to edit and revise their own work and that of other writers in the class.

Subject objectives/outcomes

In this subject students will

1. produce a folio of poems
2. acquire skills to reflect critically on their writing
3. acquire skills to revise and re-draft work in progress
4. build an introductory knowledge to contemporary poetry in English
5. study and practise formal and technical elements of poetry making
6. reflect and engage actively with the creative and imaginative process

Contribution to graduate profile

This subject

• enhances specific skills in writing
• develops a knowledge of a specific genre of writing
• encourages a practical understanding of aesthetic debates
• enhances critical and creative thought in relation to contemporary writing

Teaching and learning strategies

There will be more introductory material and assigned readings in the earlier part of the subject than towards the end. In the main activities will consist in a mix of workshopping activities, required exercises, reading and commentary on students' work, brief seminar presentations, in-class discussion and analysis, reading projects where students design their own reading programs and technical exercises in poetic forms and metres.

Content

The subject focuses on the consolidation of skills in writing poetry. Image-related forms of writing and sound and prosodic skills are treated with equal emphasis in the opening half of the subject. Issues to do with the definition of contemporaneity and contemporary form and technique are also stressed. Attention is paid to the long narrative poem as well as to experimental forms. As the subject progresses the focus shifts increasingly to each student's own body of work.

Assessment

Assessment item 1: To present three or four poems (written or significantly re-worked within the time-span of the class) at the end of the first part of the semester and submitted not later than 20th September

Assessment item 2: To present a short folio (between 8 to 10 poems) at the end of the semester

Assessment item 3: To introduce a poem or poems, selected from recent reading outside the class reader, in a brief presentation to the class. Brief comments to be posted on class website.

Minimum requirements

Students are expected to read the subject outline to ensure they are familiar with the subject requirements. Since class discussion and participation in activities form an integral part of this subject, you are expected to attend, arrive punctually and actively participate in classes. If you experience difficulties meeting this requirement, please contact your lecturer. Students who have a reason for extended absence (e.g., illness) may be required to complete additional work to ensure they achieve the subject objectives.

Attendance is particularly important in this subject because it is based on a collaborative approach which involves essential workshopping and interchange of ideas. Students who attend fewer than ten classes are advised that their final work will not be assessed and that they are likely to fail the subject.

Required text(s)

Subject Reader

Indicative references

Selected Anthologies

ed. Dorothy Porter, The Best Australian Poems 2006, Melbourne: Black Inc 2006

ed. Judith Beveridge, The Best Australian Poetry 2006, St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press 2006

ed. Jon Cook, Poetry in theory: an Anthology 1900 – 2000, Malden, MA: Blackwell 2004

eds. Richard Ellman, Robert O'Clair, John Ramazani, The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, third edition, New York: W.W.Norton and Co, 2003

eds. Fred Moramarco and others, Poetry International: The Post-colonial English Language Diaspora, Poetry International 7/8, San Diego: San Diego State University Press, 2003

Gray, Robert, Afterimages, Duffy and Snellgrove, Sydney 2002.

Selected Poems, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1990

ed. John Leonard, New Music: an Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry, Wollongong: Five Islands Press 2001

eds. Michael Brennan and Peter Minter, Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets, Sydney: Paper Bark Press, 2000

eds. Jed Rasula and Steve McAffery, Imagining Language: An anthology, Boston: MIT Press 1998

eds. Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris, Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry (From Postwar to Millennium , Vols 1 and 2), Berkeley: University of California Press 1995 and 1998

eds. Phillip Mead and John Tranter, The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry, Ringwood: Penguin 1991 and later editions

eds. Carol Cosman, Joan Keefe and Kathleen Weaver, The Penguin Book of Women Poets, New York: Viking Press 1986

ed. Les Murray, The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1986 and later editions

ed Richard Kostelanetz, Text-Sound Texts, New York, William Morrow 1980

ed. Jerome Rothenberg, Technicians of the Sacred, A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia and Oceania, New York: Doubleday1968 and later editions

Websites (Australian)

Poetry International

http://australia.poetryinternationalweb.org/ piw_cms/ cms/ cms_module/ index.php?obj_id=15

Australian Literary Resources http://www.austlit.com/ a/ index.html