Make it New! How poetry became modern

City Lit

Course

In London

£ 199 VAT inc.

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Description

  • Type

    Course

  • Location

    London

  • Start date

    Different dates available

We look at how poetry became modern in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – how and why it changed from the traditional style of previous centuries (regular, rhyming, formal, explicit) to develop features which make modern poetry different from all previous kinds and can make it seem difficult. These features include freer forms, a focus on image and symbol, sudden juxtapositions, inexplicit meanings, allusions and playing with language and tone.

Facilities

Location

Start date

London
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Keeley Street, Covent Garden, WC2B 4BA

Start date

Different dates availableEnrolment now open

About this course

- Understand how and why poetry changed from traditional to modernist.
- Understand the principles of modernist poetry.
- Enjoy reading and discussing many fine poems.

No. Photocopies of all the poems will be provided.

The sessions are run in a seminar style with all students included in discussions led by the tutor and some small-group discussions with feedback. You will receive copies of the poems the previous week so you can read them to be ready to discuss them.

TUTOR BIOGRAPHY:
Laurie Smith has taught poetry writing and literature courses at The City Lit for some years, focussing on modernism and writers’ radicalism. He researches and lectures at King’s College London, helped to found Magma poetry magazine, which he sometimes edits, and has recently been a Trustee of the Poetry Society.

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Subjects

  • Poetry

Course programme

We will look at some of the 19th century forerunners of modernism including Yeats’s rediscovery of Blake, Baudelaire, Whitman and French symbolists like Jules Laforgue. We will then track how, building on these earlier poets, Yeats, Pound, Eliot and others remade poetry in English between 1910 and 1925, finishing with some poems by Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. We will read Baudelaire and Laforgue in translation.

Additional information

Please see our range of Literature courses under Humanities in the prospectus and under History, Culture and Writing on the website at General information and advice on courses at City Lit is available from the Student Centre and Library on Monday to Friday from 12:00 – 19:00. See the course guide for term dates and further details

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Make it New! How poetry became modern

£ 199 VAT inc.

The best Literature courses

See all

See all