Accessibility statement

The Stuff of Poetry: 1900—present - ENG00107H

« Back to module search

  • Department: English and Related Literature
  • Module co-ordinator: Dr. Daniel Matore
  • Credit value: 20 credits
  • Credit level: H
  • Academic year of delivery: 2024-25

Module summary

Something very strange happened to poetry over the course of the last century. Lines and stanzas—the very stuff it is supposed to be made from—exploded, crumbled, or evaporated. Hieroglyphs, neon signs, musical notation, photographs, playing cards, maps, and geometrical oddities began to take their place or jostle for room. Unruly materials and alien shapes started to take over the printed page.

How does a sonnet become a multimedia textual behemoth that cannibalises art, music, advertising, or videography? This module will chart the history of this transformation through British and American, African-American, and French Caribbean poetry. We’ll range from the modernist epic of Ezra Pound’s Cantos and the psychogeography of Hope Mirrlees’s Paris: A Poem to the prose poetry of Aimé Césaire and Geoffrey Hill to postwar and contemporary experiments with typography, protest, and identity in the verse of Allen Ginsberg, and Claudia Rankine. We’ll investigate free verse, rhythm, typography, prose poetry, printing, and the material text. But we’ll also confront how literary forms and materials are entangled in music, advertising, fascism, American politics, nationhood, and identity.

Module will run

Occurrence Teaching period
A Semester 2 2024-25

Module aims

The aim of this module is to equip you with an advanced understanding of avant-garde and experimental poetry from 1900 to the present day.

Module learning outcomes

On successful completion of the module, you should be able to:

  1. Demonstrate an advanced understanding of and engagement with Anglo-American, African-American, and Francophone poetry.

  2. Demonstrate an advanced understanding of and engagement with modernist, postwar and contemporary poetics.

  3. Evaluate key debates within the relevant critical fields dealing with poetics, materiality, politics, and literary form.

  4. Produce independent arguments and ideas which demonstrate an advanced proficiency in critical thinking, research, and writing skills.

Assessment

Task Length % of module mark
Essay/coursework
Essay 3000 words		 N/A 100

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

You will be given the opportunity to submit a 1000-word formative essay for the module, which can feed into the 3000-word summative essay submitted at the end of the module.

Your essay will be annotated and returned to you by your tutor within two weeks.

You will submit your summative essay via the VLE during the revision and assessment weeks at the end of the teaching semester (weeks 13-15). Feedback on your summative essay will be uploaded to e:Vision to meet the University’s marking deadlines

Reassessment

Task Length % of module mark
Essay/coursework
Essay 3000 words		 N/A 100

Module feedback

You will receive feedback on all assessed work within the University deadline, and will often receive it more quickly. The purpose of feedback is to inform your future work; it is designed to help you to improve your work, and the Department also offers you help in learning from your feedback. If you do not understand your feedback or want to talk about your ideas further you can discuss it with your tutor or your supervisor, during their Open Office Hours

For more information about the feedback you will receive for your work, see the department's Guide to Assessment

Indicative reading

Ezra Pound, The Cantos (1917[-1968])

Hope Mirrlees, Paris: A Poem (1920)

E.E. Cummings, Tulips and Chimneys (1923)

Aimé Césaire, Notebook of a Return to my Native Land (1939)

Allen Ginsberg, Kaddish and Other Poems (1961)

Geoffrey Hill, Mercian Hymns (1971)

Marianne Moore, Observations (1924)

Claudia Rankine, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric (2004)


The information on this page is indicative of the module that is currently on offer. The University is constantly exploring ways to enhance and improve its degree programmes and therefore reserves the right to make variations to the content and method of delivery of modules, and to discontinue modules, if such action is reasonably considered to be necessary by the University. Where appropriate, the University will notify and consult with affected students in advance about any changes that are required in line with the University's policy on the Approval of Modifications to Existing Taught Programmes of Study.