Literature: Stanzas for Summer

Whether it’s William Blake’s ‘The Fly’, Elizabeth Bishop's 'Questions of Travel' or, more contemporarily, Seamus Heaney’s ‘Death of a Naturalist’, poets have always looked to summer, the sun, as well as to place and travel for their inspiration. On this online 10-week course we will read, explore and enjoy some notable works by a selection of significant poets in the English language, classic and contemporary, to explore how they incorporate images, ideas and subjects related to these themes. We will look at and consider a couple of key poets and poems per session in relation to the overall course theme. In doing so, we will create some links between form, ideas/subject matter and the life of each poet. Alongside close reading of the 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 and their unique approach to the art of poetry, which should set the poems in their temporal context and within the poet's life and career. Through this we will also look to understand how a particular sense of voice is established and created within the works we encounter.