Session 9

Are lyrics poetry? Songs and poems began life as inseparable twins, but they are now - for the most part - thoroughly estranged . . . .

Session Seven

Poems about Animals

or if that doesn't work try here

Ted Hughes reads The Thought Fox

Session Six

Some poems about people to look at

WH Auden, Epitaph on a Tyrant

Norman MacCaig Aunt Julia

Fay Hart I Love Drunks

C.P. Cavafy An Old Man

George Barker To My Mother

Jackie Kay Brendon Gallacher

Session Four

Some poems to look at

William Stafford, Traveling through the Dark

William Empson, Missing Dates

Elizabeth Bishop, One Art

Dennis O'Driscoll Someone

Michael Hartnett, Death of an Irishwoman

Session Three

Some poems to look at

Jane Hirshfield, 'For What Binds Us'
Jane Hirshfield, 'Tree'

Les Murray, 'Bats' Ultrasound'

Don't forget to listen to the audio!

Session Two

The poems referred to in Session Two will be poster here after Friday's class

Please note that there will be no class on Friday 8 October as I will be away. An extra class will be added on the the end of the course.

Exercise
for Friday 15 October

Go the Van Gogh Gallery. Or any other online or real art gallery. If you're in the neighbourhood of Parnell Square you could drop into the Hugh Lane Gallery. Choose one of the paintings that you find interesting. Look carefully at your painting now, its textures, shapes, tones and emotions; observe the various objects in its composition.
In this exercise, you will learn how a poem can be saturated with images.
Imagine that you are some thing in the painting and try to write a poem from that point of view. When you begin to write, speak in your poem as though you have become that thing in the painting. Step inside the painting and imagine that you are actually there, standing, observing, smelling, and tasting the things around you in the painting.

Session One Texts

In That Great River: A Notebook by Anna Kamienska, from The Poetry Foundation

Poets on Notebooks

Start a Commonplace Book