“All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will always be another poet.” – Stevie Smith –
In this class, we will study British poetry since 1945, working our way from canonised poets to emergent voices, with a dual focus on written and performed texts, including what is now widely received as ‘spoken word’ or ‘performance poetry’. Our survey will begin with Stevie Smith and Sylvia Plath, Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay, and we’ll work our way towards poets such as Alice Oswald, Liz Berry, Ka(t)e Tempest, Hollie McNish, Hannah Lowe, and Warsan Shire. We will cover a broad range of themes evoked in the works of these poets, and tackle a wide array of poetic forms, from the ‘traditional’ sonnet to free verse, from confessional poetry to dramatic monologue, from ‘traditional’ poetry recital to spoken word performance. To get an idea of what awaits you, do browse the recordings available in the Poetry Archive (https://poetryarchive.org/) and on youtube and listen to the strong communications made by the poets mentioned above!
In terms of didactics, this seminar will encourage you to discuss your aesthetic reading/listening experiences of the set texts, whilst also taking time to equip everyone more thoroughly with academic close reading skills, critical vocabularies related to poetry and contextual knowledge to qualify our discussions. Be prepared to contribute to this seminar by way of short presentations, brief response papers, and, of course, much reading aloud and sharing your thoughts!
Finally, be prepared to introduce yourself in the first session by reciting a poetic text of your own choosing – that may well be a text widely recognised as a poem, or the lyrics of a song that you think makes a strong communication in poetic form!
- Dozent/in: Katrin Becker