Reading Poetry: Lyric Poetry and Form

Have you always had a love of poetry and want to know more about it? Then this course is for you! In this online, 10-week course you will read, explore and enjoy some key works by a selection of significant contemporary and historical poets in the English language, you will look at and consider a key example of a poetic form each week with scope to include a variety of notable poems that articulate this. In doing so, you will create some links between form, idea and writer. Alongside close reading of chosen poems we will engage with literary criticism on each poet, as well as poetry, form and poetics generally, exploring the backgrounds of each writer, their lives and their unique approach to the art of poetry, which should set the poems in context of time and the poet's life. Through this we will also look to understand how a particular sense of identity and voice has been created within the work we encounter, in a supportive group and with a knowledgeable tutor who has run courses of this kind many times. It is hoped that you will take the analytical skills you have gained on this course to your community to perhaps take the learning to other and also foster some further learning. No experience is needed, just bring yourself and your enthusiasm for poetry!