Introductory description

The Practice of Poetry is a flagship module of the Warwick Writing Programme and had been celebrated widely for its success in producing poets and publishers who have founded and developed their careers in the real world over the last twenty years. Successful graduates have gone on record in the media as naming this module as the reason they turned to a life in poetry. Many students have gone on to considerable acclaim as poets, performers and publishers. A considerable number of poets have also won major prizes including a substantial number of Eric Gregory Award winners, the Costa Poetry Prize, The Manchester Poetry Competition and several Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Graduates have published books with Bloodaxe Books, Carcanet Press, Seren Books, Salt Publications, Penned in the Margins and Eyewear Publications. The changes to this module have come about in discussions not only with current students but also with our distinguished alumni several of whom have returned to speak with our current undergraduates about their careers.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

TERM 1
Week 1 The Riddle of Form.
Week 2. The Lyric and Duende.
Week 3. The Physicality of a Poem.
Week 4. Talk as Poetry and 'the Sound of Sense'.
Week 5. The Non-verbal Life of Language: Line, Punctuation, Space.
Week 6. Writing Week.
Week 5. The Mathematics of Prosody.
Week 7. The Villanelle.
Week 8. The Pantoum.
Week 9. Sestinas and Double Sestinas.
Week 10. Terza Rima.
TERM 2
Week 11. The Several Species of Sonnet.
Week 12. Intensive workshop on Sonnet Crown
Week 13. Making and Placing Poems: Conceptual Art.
Week 14. Digital Poetry.
Week 15. Poetry as Community: Collaborative Poetry.
Week 16. Writing Week.
Week 17. Spoken Word.
Week 18. Revising Poems and Shaping a Collection.
Week 18. The Marketplace and Reviewing.
Week 20. Cosmology and Praxis.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• By the end of this module the student should be able to work in several forms of poetry and created poems using a variety of media.
• By the end of this module the student should be able to comprehend the working practices of some contemporary poets writing in English, and how their work may be used as models for the student's own practice.
• By the end of this module the student should be able to apply some knowledge of the power and practice of imagination in poetic creation.
• By the end of this module the student should be able to work in metred and unmetred verse using a variety of rhyme strategies.
• By the end of this module the student should be able to appreciate the diversity of contemporary verse strategies, including hybrid poetries, spoken word performance and conceptual art derived from poetic praxis.
• By the end of this module the student should be able to possess some practical understanding of their own poetics, and that of other poets, with regard to poetry.
• By the end of this module the student should be able possess a realistic knowledge of the marketplace for poetry.

Indicative reading list

A Poet’s Guide to Poetry, Mary Kinzie (Chicago University Press, 1999).
Writing Poems, Michelle Boisseau and Robert Wallace (6th ed., Longman Pearson, 2004)
An Introduction to English Poetry, James Fenton (Penguin, 2002)
The Art of Poetry Writing, Mary Oliver (St Martin’s Press, 1992)
Companion Spider, Clayton Eshleman (Wesleyan, 2001)
The Triggering Town, Richard Hugo’s (Norton, 1979).
The Practice of Poetry, edited by Robin Behn and Chase Twichell (HarperResource, 2001).
The Making of a Poem, Mark Strand and Eavan Boland (Norton, 2000)
Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, Paul Fussell (Random House, 1965)
Rhyme’s Reason, John Hollander (Yale, 2001),
All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing: An Explanation of Meter and Versification, Timothy Steele,
(Ohio, 1999),
The Oxford Dictionary of Rhymes (OUP, 2006)
Spoken Work Resources
Electronic Poetry Center
www.epc.buffalo.edu
The Poetry Archive
http://www.poetryarchive.org/
The Writers at Warwick Archive
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/writingprog/archive/

Subject specific skills

By the end of this module the student should be able to:
Work in several forms of poetry and created poems using a variety of media.
Comprehend the working practices of some contemporary poets writing in English, and how their work may be used as models for the student's own practice.
Apply some knowledge of the power and practice of imagination in poetic creation.
Work in metred and unmetred verse using a variety of rhyme strategies.

Transferable skills

No transferable skills defined for this module.