English 100P - Winter, 2016

Creative Writing: Poetry

Class Information

Instructor: Peterson, Katie
Time: TR 4:40-6:00
Location: 308 Voorhies

Description

Admission is by application and acceptance of instructor (application available online)

In this class, we will create the conditions for making poems, and then make them. We’ll use a workshop format to create a community, share our work, and read each other’s work with attention. We’ll talk about what we’ve read with an emphasis on what’s most useful and exciting for you as a writer, and we will focus on language rather than content. We’ll write poems with exercises and without them. Our reading will consist of selected poems from a good anthology from antiquity to the present, newer poems by an American poet, and a distributed anthology of very contemporary works from the last few years. Our listening will consist of own own and each other’s work, and various recordings online.

Grading

The most important elements of grading for this class is workshop participation and your commitment to your writing. Students will be asked to comment on each other’s work, and on the reading, in class and in written form. About ten new poems will be expected from each student over the course of the quarter, with a few revisions, and a brief paper.

Texts

Letter to a Stranger, Thomas James
The Rattle Bag, (editors) Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes