Making Something Happen: Twentieth Century Poetry

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M AK I N G SOM E T H IN G H APPEN : T W E N T IE T H C E N T U R Y P OE T R Y A N D P OLITICS Q33395 –Spring Semester For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executives Would never want to tamper, flows on south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth. (W.H. Auden, ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’, 1940) This module introduces participants to key modern and contemporary poets, equipping students with a detailed understanding of how various poetic forms manifest themselves in particular historical moments. Unifying the module is an attention to poets’ responses to the political and ideological upheavals of the twentieth century. Poets studied: Beginning with Yeats and Eliot, the module will include such (primarily) British and Irish poets as W.B. Yeats, W. H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Wislawa Szymborska, Tony Harrison, Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Adrienne Rich, Geoffrey Hill, Jo Shapcott, Patience Agbabi and Alice Oswald. Some of the forms examined will include: the elegy, the pastoral (and anti-pastoral), the ode, the sonnet (and sonnet sequence), the ekphrastic poem, the version or retelling, the villanelle, the parable and the sestina. In order to develop a more complete perspective on each poet’s engagement with twentieth- century formal and political problems, we will also examine these figures’ writings in other modes – critical essays, manifestos, speeches and, where permitted, primary archival materials such as letters and manuscript drafts. Grounding each week will be readings on poetry and the category of the ‘political’ from an international group of critics, such as Theodor Adorno, Charles Bernstein, Claudia Rankine, Peter McDonald, Angela Leighton, Christopher Ricks and Marjorie Perloff. Assessment: Will consist of a research essay (50%) and a close reading exam of one hour (50%) Delivery: 2 hour lecture and 1 hour small group teaching seminar (seminars capped at 12). Convenor: Dr Bridget Vincent A .

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