Literary Studies: Poetry/Criticism (8143)
Semester 2 / 2011

Texts

y separately published work icon Collected Poems : Francis Webb Francis Webb , Toby Davidson (editor), Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2011 Z1706175 2011 collected work poetry (taught in 9 units)

'UWA Publishing welcomes the return of Australia's most gifted and prodigious poet, Francis Webb, whose work has been out of print for thirty years in collected form.

'This collection of Francis Webb's poems is the first edition to incorporate Webb's final changes - previously ignored by editors - to several of his poems written in 1969.

'Webb wrote on varied subjects: the sea, postwar Australian cities, mental illness, colonial histories as well as religious and political figures, including St Francis and Hitler.

'His poems are written in a range of styles, from humorous short verse to epics and radio plays.

'The book is introduced by award-winning poet Toby Davidson and accompanied by 100 pages of notes drawing on the latest scholarship and commentaries.'

Source: UWA media release, February 2011, http://www.uwap.uwa.edu.au/
Sighted: 01/03/2011

y separately published work icon Vertigo (a Cantata) Jordie Albiston , Elwood : John Leonard Press , 2007 Z1372172 2007 selected work poetry (taught in 3 units)
Collected Poems 2: Poems 1985-1996!$!Peter Reading!$!Bloodaxe Books, 1996!$!!$!
y separately published work icon The Simplified World Petra White , Melbourne : John Leonard Press , 2010 Z1690772 2010 selected work poetry (taught in 1 units)

'Like Petra White’s applauded first collection, her second begins and ends with a fable of the uncanny ordinary. Between is a cornucopia of odes: epistolary, philosophical, elegiac. These poems think through and honour the normal mysteries of fate.

'Her world is large and contemporary, anchored by a young poet’s own memories. White inhabits her poems lightly, using personal experience with wit and without self-pleading. Some of this work shows the shadow of depression: not so much expressing moods as touching on how depression dwells, finding its register so it can speak.

'A number of poems openly engage with notable depressives of literary history, but we don’t need those homages to realise that this poet is a very capacious reader. It is there in her music. Late Lowell and Bishop, along with Harwood, ghost the swift edge in her language. Beyond these, a large tradition of cadences and tropes is absorbed in her fluent free verse lines.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Description

Students undertake the study of twentieth and twenty-first century English language poetry, and training in contemporary critical practice with an eye to its historical antecedents. Students read a major body of recent poetry in English. As well as an appreciation of this work, they gain insight into possible critical angles to take upon it through a survey of key works of criticism, from the 18th century and into the present. Students are trained to develop and defend their own independent critical stances. They also receive an introduction to the philosophy of judgment.

Other Details

Offered in: 2010
Levels: Undergraduate
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