What is poetry? Why do we read it and teach it? What can poetry tell us about how language operates and how words in combination might work on us? What is the relationship between poetry and voice? And why might these things matter to young people, especially? This advanced BA course will introduce students to a wide variety of poems written for – and by – young people. Together, we will read a selection of children's classics, nursery rhymes, nonsense verse, visual and concrete poetry; we will explore spoken word and internet poetry; and we will read two verse novels together: Sharon Creech’s Love That Dog (2001) and Jason Reynolds’s Long Way Down (2017). This course aims to develop students into emerging literary critics. We will spend time focusing on close reading skills, on how to engage with criticism and secondary reading, and on writing and revising a final term paper project.
- Lehrende/r: Sarah Pyke