Cirrus@Austlit

This course will allow students to explore contemporary poetic forms and language while learning skills of poem-making. It will focus on writing using procedures of contemporary poetries which engage with culture, politics, new technologies and ways of working with language rather than poetry produced as private expression. The kinds of poetry and poetics presented throughout the course to stimulate students' writing and thinking are innovative and challenging in both process and content and engage with broad cultural issues and ways they challenge and contribute to creative practice. In particular, they are designed to move students from two frequently-held positions by new poets: that poems are either purely the product of semi-formless private musing or that poems need to conform to traditional structures. By introducing a variety of contemporary approaches, students will be encouraged to think through their own writing as both a craft and an art, and to recognise that each new poem is an 'experiment', a way of testing poetry ideas out through various techniques. This course will also assist students to develop an awareness of the cultural, political and literary contexts in which their own writing will circulate.