Understanding poetry

Starting with poetry’s source in song, we shall look at how poets offer contrasting views of nature, urban life, and love.
As well as lyric poetry, we shall consider important verse forms, particularly the sonnet, blank verse and free verse. The work of Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and Hopkins will be discussed alongside major 20C poets such as Wallace Stevens, Robert Creeley and Basil Bunting. Throughout the course we shall focus on how poetic technique creates meaning. In the process we shall illuminate the art of poetry and begin to understand how it is that poets speak to us across cultures and centuries.