Students, whether creatively or critically focused, research and discuss the different demands made on the work of the poet by a range of relevant archival, critical, and creative contexts. Awareness of a range of issues pertinent to the production of, and critical reaction to, poetry is developed through analyses of the format and production of a collection, the transition from manuscript to publication, processes of authorial revision, the anthologisation of poems, the formation of creative and critical schools, and relevant critical and methodological contexts.
A discussion and analysis of how poetic form in general is produced, this module introduces students to the form and language of poetry as well as the historical dimensions of, and contexts for, various poetic forms. It analyses poetic forms in detail, grounding students in specific poetic forms (e.g. the sonnet, the sestina, villanelle), reading a wide range of examples by different poets, with students engaging with a different set form each week.
Inspired by the original ‘Belfast Group’ workshops, attended by both poets and critics, this module provides the opportunity for students to analyse and evaluate new and established writing (by themselves, or by others as appropriate) and in the process to engage with different approaches to the reading, writing, and analysis of poetry. The module also involves consideration of the poet-as-critic, through study of critical writings on poetry by range of Irish, British and American poets such as Yeats, Eliot, Auden, Stevens, Pound, Kavanagh, and Heaney, and of the poem itself as a vehicle for criticism.