SESSION ONE (7.30 pm, 4-9-08)

 

We'll begin with basic basics, the verse line,  what is it, and different ways people have made it.  Also we'll discuss things which you particularly want to include at in later sessions.

 

If you can would you bring  six copies each of two pieces of your own work, or email to me and I'll make copies

 

      (1)  An early draft of something which you don't mind reshaping in different ways to see what happens

      (2)  Something you'd like to read to the group and discuss the verse line you've used

 

Examples this week will be taken from Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf,  Arthur Waley's poem,  The Chrysanthemums in the Eastern Garden, and The Song of Solomon from the Old Testament, and if time , William Carlos Williams' poem, This is Just to Say.  See  Handout

 

 

 

SESSION TWO  (7.30 pm, 2-10-08)

 

We'll be looking at our own efforts to write an Arthur Waley kind of line.  We'll also have a look at Hopkins' poem The Windhover.   And we'll discuss the sonnet as a form.  I've put some notes on these topics under

 

Waley    

 

 

Hopkins

 

 

Sonnet

 

 

SESSION FOUR (4-12-08)

 

We'll be looking at ideas of free verse, first as variation on a set metre, then as 'organic', and then at some non-systematic features in metrical verse which are used in free verse without the metre.

 

Notes on two kinds of free verse