Poetry
On our lively poetry courses, enjoy explores this captivating genre, revisit classic texts and discover new writers plus share your views in classroom discussions.
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Poetry of the City
Course Date: Wed 19 Sep 2018
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetHow have poets conceived and evoked the cities they lived in? Visit London, Paris, New York, St. Petersburg (among others) in the company of Byron, Baudelaire, Apollinaire, Lorca, Frank O’Hara, Anna Akhmatova, Roy Fisher….Full fee: £199.00Senior fee: £159.00Concession: £88.00 -
Make it New! How poetry became modern
Course Date: Wed 19 Sep 2018
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetWe look at how and why poetry changed between 1890 and 1925, breaking with the traditional forms and language of the past thousand years to become modern in style, ideas and feelings.Full fee: £199.00Senior fee: £159.00Concession: £88.00 -
Contemporary poetry
Course Date: Fri 21 Sep 2018 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetUsing Staying Alive, (Bloodaxe Books, Ed. Neil Astley), we will read and discuss a variety of poetry written in the last 50 years, exploring a range of poetry in terms of theme, style and viewpoints. No class on 26 October.Full fee: £199.00Senior fee: £159.00Concession: £88.00 -
The poetry of Keats: a literary workshop
Course Date: Sat 29 Sep 2018 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: OS - Off SiteRead and discuss some of Keats' poetry in the location in which many of them were written. Explore 'The Odes' and 'The Eve of St. Agnes'. The course takes place at Keats House and is led by literature tutor Jenny Baynes.Full fee: £39.00Senior fee: £39.00Concession: £39.00 -
Love and desire in Shakespeare
Course Date: Sun 14 Oct 2018
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetExplore how Shakespeare presents the delights and difficulties of love and desire in a range of plays, and in so doing consider the practical contemporary significance of his insights.Full fee: £49.00Senior fee: £39.00Concession: £25.00 -
An introduction to poetry
Course Date: Sat 3 Nov 2018
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetAlways wanted to read and discuss poetry? Enjoy this introduction to a range of poetry from the last 400 years and explore how the poets shape our responses.Full fee: £29.00Senior fee: £23.00Concession: £15.00 -
Faith and doubt in Victorian poetry
Course Date: Sun 18 Nov 2018
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetVictorian Britain saw an upsurge of religious affirmation in the context of profound unease concerning the assertions of faith. We shall consider how the work of the age’s most accomplished poets expresses that paradox.Full fee: £49.00Senior fee: £39.00Concession: £25.00 -
Literary Evening Lecture: David Constantine - What my poetry owes to translation
Course Date: Fri 30 Nov 2018
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetCome and join us for a stimulating evening of lecture and discussion at our November Literary Evening Lecture, where the writer and translator David Constantine will read from his poetry. He will also talk about how translating from foreign languages has helped him in his own writing. The evening will includes a more general discussion of the need for translation in the making of any nation's poetic language.Full fee: £9.00Senior fee: £9.00Concession: £9.00 -
Poetry Cooked and Raw: from Emily Dickinson to the Beat poets
Course Date: Tue 15 Jan 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetExplore how poets moved during the 20th century from formal language and regular form towards more natural language, freer forms and more direct expression of feeling, including the Beat Poets, confessionalism and prose poetry.Full fee: £179.00Senior fee: £179.00Concession: £79.00 -
Milton: Paradise Lost – ‘Our inner freedom’
Course Date: Sat 26 Jan 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetParadise Lost excites fascination and controversy, confronting the existence of evil in a divinely ordained world. We shall consider a representative selection of crucial passages to illuminate the practical contemporary significance of this cosmic work.Full fee: £49.00Senior fee: £39.00Concession: £25.00 -
Bertolt Brecht: poet in times of revolution, war and exile
Course Date: Sun 27 Jan 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetThe day, led by the writer and translator David Constantine, will be an introduction to Brecht's life and times and an exploration of a range of his poetry.
Biography:
David Constantine, born 1944 in Salford, Lancashire, was for thirty years a university teacher of German language and literature. He has published a dozen volumes of poetry (most recently – 2014 – Elder); two novels, Davies (1985) and The Life-Writer (2015); and five collections of short stories. He is an editor and translator of Hölderlin, Goethe, Kleist and Brecht. For his stories he won the BBC National and the Frank O’ Connor International Awards (2010, 2013).The film 45 Years was based on his story In Another Country. With Helen Constantine he edited Modern Poetry in Translation, 2003-12. Later this year Bloodaxe will publish his new and greatly enlarged Selected Poetry of Hölderlin and Norton his translations, with Tom Kuhn, of more than 1000 poems of Bertolt Brecht.Full fee: £49.00Senior fee: £39.00Concession: £25.00 -
An introduction to poetry: Auden, Larkin, Hughes, Plath and Heaney
Course Date: Sun 27 Jan 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetYou will read ,discuss and enjoy a selection of poetry by W.H. Auden, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney in terms of their styles and themes.Full fee: £29.00Senior fee: £23.00Concession: £15.00 -
Alexander Pope: 'The proper study of mankind'
Course Date: Sat 16 Feb 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetDiscover how Pope dominated the early 18C with a series of ambitious and astonishingly varied masterpieces, ranging from savage satire, via romantic eloquence, to his greatest philosophical and spiritual undertaking – An Essay on Man.Full fee: £49.00Senior fee: £39.00Concession: £25.00 -
John Keats: 'The vale of soul making'
Course Date: Sat 2 Mar 2019
Location on this date: OS - Off SiteKeats pursued – vigorously and brilliantly – questions related to ultimate truths. We shall consider a representative selection of his poetry and letters, reflecting on how their creative insights can help illuminate our own experience and aspirations.Full fee: £39.00Senior fee: £31.00Concession: £20.00 -
Understanding poetry
Course Date: Sat 30 Mar 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetFrom Shakespeare and Milton to Ezra Pound and Frank O'Hara, what makes different types of poetry tick, and how can we gain the confidence to read them perceptively and with real enjoyment?Full fee: £49.00Senior fee: £39.00Concession: £22.00