Course syllabus

English 343, Writing Poetry and Other Experiments, 2017

Tuesday 10-1, 273-104 (Fale complex room 104)

Assoc. Professor Lisa Samuels. Arts 1 room 631; office hour Wednesday 12-1 PM & by appointment (l.samuels@auckland.ac.nz)

Professor Michele Leggott. Arts 1 room 603; office hour Wednesday 2-3 PM & by appointment (m.leggott@auckland.ac.nz)

 

Course description  

This course is for upper-level undergraduates who want to expand their poetry styles and ideas, write material-toward-poetry as well as ‘finished’ poems, and develop a reading community in which we attend to each other’s writing. The course operates like a class in drawing or dance, with exercises designed to open your writing perceptions and strengthen your writing muscles.

The last century has been good for poetries in global Englishes: innumerable approaches characterize what’s called poetry. We will discuss and write in some of those approaches. We’ll also investigate web sites and books and talk about differences between composition and revision strategies. We will discuss representation, images, rhythms, diction, lines, words, syntax, sounds, rhymes, code mixing, page area, digitality, typography, punctuation, appropriation, performance, translingualism, rearrangement, and more. We will discuss particular writing strengths, how to optimize the versioning of your poems, and how to fit some poems and poetics together into two portfolios.

 

Class organization

First hour: class time. Reading and writing preparation are indicated in the Daily Schedule and/or handed out in advance, via Canvas, and/or in class. We will read, listen, look, write, depending on the material for that day. We will discuss the readings, exercises, studio work, and other relevant matters. Here you will sometimes be expected to attend to prepared and spot lectures and sometimes to participate as we do exercises and discuss readings.

Second hour: small group peer response time. Here assigned groups will discuss student poems together, with the guidance of the studio preparation tips and response sheet. We will circulate among the studio groups.

Third hour (weeks 2-11): exercise time. We re-group as a class, debrief about your studio discussions, and work together on exercises and poetic effects.

 

Requirements

1. Readings. We will read 3 poetry books (at UBS), Canvas postings, handouts, and this syllabus. You need these materials in order to participate in the course.

Laura Mullen, Enduring Freedom (Otis Books 2012)

Tusiata Avia, Fale Aitu | Spirit House (Victoria University Press 2016)

Stephanie Christie, The Facts of Light (Vagabond 2014)

2. Preparation and participation. A hands-on creative production, reading, discussion, and performance class means that everyone makes the class work together. Your writing and reading in advance of class time will help you succeed in class participation, which is both a requirement and a generosity. Excused absences must be documented by official notices. If you have good reasons for missing class, please explain them to us.

3. Your writing. Bring 1-3 pages (or the digital and/or performance and/or sound equivalent) of poetry in draft for discussion EACH WEEK. For page work, use 12-point font unless stylistic exceptions are a feature of that poetry. All assigned and unassigned weekly poetry needs to be brought to class in a printed form (printer or hand-writing) that can be written on. Bringing two copies can be effective for this requirement.

4. Peer response. When you read peer writing, work to help identify the effects of that writing and suggest alternatives. The better you can identify how someone else is writing, the better you learn how writing operates. You can use the studio response sheet, ‘ways of reading’ suggestions, and/or ‘ERR(o)R’ approaches to organize your peer responses.

5. Exercises. We will carry out planned and spontaneous writing exercises, including imitations of poetic forms and other ways of generating poetic material. Take full advantage of these exercises by attending to their implications for your writing and by completing them.

6. Portfolios. You will hand in two portfolios, after weeks 6 and 12. Each portfolio should contain 5-8 poems, depending on length and type. The 5-poem count is a minimum; the minimum word count for poetry in each portfolio is 600 words. This minimum word count is based on the expectation that you will write to revision standard at least 100 words of poetry per week.

At least one portfolio poem must be developed from your writing outside of assigned exercises, and at least one must be in response to an assigned exercise. Please note: for each portfolio, you also need to send an electronic file in doc format that includes ONLY your completed 5-8 poems for review. Send this doc file to the email addresses recorded at the top of this syllabus.

Make it clear how the portfolio is organized

Include a list of ‘Contents.’

Number your portfolio poems #1, #2, and so on, in addition to providing titles (if you title your poems; not all writers do).

Provide draft work as evidence of your effort and revising. You can clip the draft work for each poem to the back of the ‘finished’ version and label it ‘Draft for Poem #[X].’ Or you can include a notebook, or photocopied pages, if you tend to write your draft poetry by hand. Or you can put the completed poems at the front of the portfolio and all the draft work, clearly labelled for each poem, in a different section of the portfolio.

Where your poems use symbols, digital environments, and other non-verbal art, we will assess how those art forms are effective in relation to the verbal content. You can send us url links or provide flash drives containing such work.

Portfolio Exercises

With each portfolio, one poetry exercise is also to be included. Label these Poetry Exercise #1 (for Portfolio 1) and Poetry Exercise #2 (for Portfolio 2).

Please note: your Exercise can be in draft form and can correlate with a ‘finished’ poem. In this case, the amount of work you do from Exercise draft to revision will be reflected in your mark for the Exercise itself and then also in your mark for achievment and range expansion in the completed poem.

  

Grading numerics and remarks

Portfolio: 80% total: 40% x two (for each portfolio, 5% Poetry Exercise, 10% Expanding your Range, 25% Achievement).

Weekly writing and preparation 10%: come prepared, with the required weekly writing and indications of dedication to poetry activities (outside reading, etc).

Participation 10%: attention and generosity in all class activities.

The portfolios demonstrate your engagement with course ideas as evidenced in your creative output. We look for the maximum quality of such evidence and for sustained imaginative work and effort: portfolios should show that you are writing for many hours every week. Because students pursue creative assignments differently, grading criteria work in terms of categories rather than paradigms of accuracy. Your poetry will be assessed according to creative categories such as minimalism, maximalism, energy, restraint, proceduralism, and free form. Some developing poets are drawn to order, distillation, quietude, and/or pre-set forms. Some are drawn to sampling, mixed media, performance, and/or collaboration. Some are drawn to verbal energy, representational indeterminacy, myriad inclusions, and/or free-form work. This class will both help and assess you as you identify and develop, and also as you expand outward from, your poetic tendencies.

Because it is important to push against as well as develop your tendencies, and because different exercises open different areas of your poetry art, grades will also be assigned according to the quality of your efforts to try new compositional styles and multiple poetic tools. This is what we call ‘expanding your range.’ Expanding your range can equal intensifying and/or differentiating and/or adding to a form as well as trying different styles.

Technology policies

Though email is quick, human beings need time. During the term, we will ordinarily reply to emails within 72 hours. We extend the same timeline courtesy to you. Please do not use iPods, mobile phones, or other such devices during class time. If an emergency situation requires you to be contactable on a given day, let us know so that the class can be prepared for an interruption. You are welcome to use computers to take notes and check relevant online materials in direct engagement with class work. During class time, please do not use your computer for messaging, blogging, or other things that take your attention from the class.

Disabilities Accommodation Statement

If you have a condition that impairs your ability to satisfy course criteria, please meet with us to discuss feasible instructional accommodation. Accommodation can be provided only for a documented disability. Please tell us about such circumstances by the second week of the semester or as soon as possible after a condition is diagnosed.

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Weekly Schedule (DRAFT). This schedule is subject to change. You are responsible for noting any changes we make during class or via Canvas.

 

Week 1 (July 25)

Welcome. Staff Student Consultative Committee, syllabus.

Assignment: EXERCISE 1, Metric proceduralism. In-class discussion of meter and lines. In-class composition. Transparency, opacity, and poetry’s knowing. We’ll discuss language in poetry and exposition. Poetry gives language a chance to dream itself and the writer and reader a chance to use our most important cultural comprehension tool – language – in something other than a restricted economy.

 

Week 2 (1 August)

NOTE: 10-1 (3 hour) class begins this week. Terms: discourse, code switching, generative composing.

Assignment: EXERCISE 2, Collaborative text. In-class discussion of discourse: generally a term for ways of using language, specifically “a” discourse (in a profession or artistic practice, e.g.) is a particular, contextualized way of using language. Arguably, all language use is discourse, but not all language users decide what kind of discourse they are using, and discourse and code mixing is constant. Generative composing refers to techniques for composing using pre-set procedures, tools, and environments.

 

Week 3 (8 August)

Assignment: EXERCISE 3, Prompt lines (additional sheet provided in-class). Active revision (not the same thing as editing). Ways to revise from different composition modes. “First thought best thought” considered. These revision topics feature now that we have had peer response work and you have an increasing number of exercise drafts and new poetry compositions to hand.

 

Week 4 (15 August)

VISITING WRITER: READ Laura Mullen, Enduring Freedom. Exercise on prose poetry to be advised.

*Laura Mullen and Melanie Rands performances: Tuesday 15 August 5 PM, Pat Hanan room (Arts 2 upstairs)

*LOUNGE READING Wed 16 August Old Government House 5.30-7 pm

 

Week 5 (22 August)

Assignment: EXERCISE 4: Timing in composition. Working together as a group, with someone calling out tempo: alternate between composing fast and very slowly. Your attention should be fixed on the timing of your writing rather than its content as such.

*Friday 25 Aug: National Poetry Day

 

Week 6 (29 August)

Performance. For exercise hour, bring an object that reflects or dramatically prepares you for performing: your Red Reading Shirt, your Talking Stick, etc. Prior to our class meeting, check ubuweb, pennsound, and meshworks, online, for various performance models.

We will also discuss “presentation versions” of poems, anticipating your handing in of Portfolio A. Versioning is a well-established and encouraging way to understand how we make “finished” poems.

**Portfolio 1 to Arts 1 Reception by 3 PM Tuesday 5 September.** Extensions are granted only with official excuses. Unexcused lateness results in a deduction of 2 points per day late up to 8 September. After that date unexcused late portfolios will not be read or graded.

*Mid-semester break Monday 4–Sunday 17 September*

 

Week 7 (19 September)

READ Tusiata Avia, Fale Aitu | Spirit House

Assignment: EXERCISE 5, The House we Used to Live in. Deixis makes for presentness (“here”; “that”). It is indexical; it points to place, time, and action. Personal pronouns (they / I / we / you) introduce bodies and affective verisimilitude into the poem: someone is there with an experience. We’ll discuss how deixis locates your poem in time and place.

* LOUNGE READING Wed 20 September Old Government House 5.30-7 pm

 

Week 8 (26 September)

Assignment: EXERCISE 6, Computing poem. Digital and other multimedia poetry. We will listen to and look at examples of poetry carried out with computing platforms and with media in addition to language. See nzepc <http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/>, Electronic Literature Collection 2, 2011, online access <http://collection.eliterature.org/2/>, and more.

 

Week 9 (3 October)

Assignment: EXERCISE 7, Translingual poem. Dialects, foreign languages, graphemes. Creative writers have been using two or more languages in works for many centuries. Language change and mixing is a constant; bringing a second or third language into our poetry gives us practice in participating in that mixing. Recent translingual poetry is often overtly involved with transidentity / ethnic / nation / culture issues.

 

Week 10 (10 October)

READ Stephanie Christie, The Facts of Light

Assignment: EXERCISE 8, Open experiment. We will discuss again how poetry experiments with the expository and communicative resources of language and how those experiments may be said to know in relation to other formulations of “knowing” and “social action.” You might try a formal imitation of a poem by Laura Mullen, Tusiata Avia, or Stephanie Christie. If you do a formal imitation, use the same number/types of lines and the same number of words per line, writing your words into the shape of your chosen model poem.

 

Week 11 (17 October)

Bring one cleanly printed poem you want to include in our class chapbook.

Assignment: EXERCISE 9, Move-look-listen-touch (in and out of class).

Revising and editing. We will revisit the topic of revising, with reminders about poetic ecology, listening for wheel-spinning and diluting and modulations, and bringing in new/pastiche parts to a poem. We’ll also re-visit the topic of editing to a ‘presentation version’ of a poem.

* LOUNGE READING Wed 18 October Old Government House 5.30-7 pm

 

Week 12 (24 October)

Final meeting. Class chapbook making, discussion of Portfolio 2.

**Portfolio 2 to Arts Student Centre Reception (HSB) by 3 PM on Wednesday 1 November.** Extensions are granted only with official excuses. Unexcused lateness results in a deduction of 2 points per day late up to 6 November. After that date unexcused late portfolios will not be read or graded.

 

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Peer response: use this sheet to guide your peer discussion. You may write on this sheet and/or on the printed copy of the poem.

Date ____________ Your name ________________________________________

Writer and poem title or first line _______________________________________

 

1. Describe the affective center and/or main energy of the poem.

____________________________________________________________

 

2. Read aloud to consider moments of the poem that are exciting, effective, and high/low (intense/restful) in your reading. Point out those “best” parts.

____________________________________________________________

 

3. Consider the kinds of language in the poem. Is the poem using, or might it try to use, everyday speech, formal diction, imperatives, or questions? Does it have too many/too few nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, or “found” language parts? Help the writer think about word choice and discourse type for this

____________________________________________________________

 

4. Consider the layout - stanzas, lines, clusters, disassembled words, open page areas - or, for sound poems, the performance pacing. Help the writer think about how that layout or pacing works with the poem’s language.

____________________________________________________________

 

5. Consider the point of view and rhetorical situation of the poem. Would a different kind of “voice” or a different kind of place or manner of address help achieve the energies of this poem?

___________________________________________________________

  

Presentation, response & revision: notes for poetry writers and readers

1. Focus: for writers, use 11-12 point font. Focus is the virtue here, not massive quantity. If you offer too many poems, or too long a poem, it will be harder for your peer writer to respond in the time allotted.
2. Titles: like a person’s name, a title gives us an introduction and an orientation. Sometimes it helps to give a concrete title (a place name, a date, a clear statement, e.g.) to an abstract-oriented poem and an abstract title (a clause like “This poem loves you,” e.g.) to a concrete-oriented poem. It’s fine not to provide a title: in that case the poem is “Untitled (‘[first few words]’)”.

Do not underline poem titles unless there is a part of the title you want to be italicized. There is no need to demarcate titles typographically unless you want particular emphases.

 

III. Ways of reading: apply at least one of these categories at least once in peer response and in revising your own poetry.

1. Syntax, or word order in a grammatical system, is crucial in a writer’s style. What is the main syntax of this poetry and what are its effects? Is it hypotactic, paratactic, discursive, fragmented, consistent, interrupted? Try alternatives: actually write out some lines using different syntax.
2. Word types: what does the diction sound like? What is the balance of nouns, verbs, adjectives, function words (articles, conjunctions, etc.), monosyllabic, or polysyllabic words? Consider whether a poem has adequate or excessive description. Consider whether things can be “shown” with verbs instead of described or “told” with nouns/adverbs (and vice versa). Consider phrases and ways of clustering words.
3. Page/screen set-up: what are the effects of the layout (line length, strophe styles, image-text ratios, scattered words)? We learn to view some layouts as “invisible”: one example is the left-margin-justified strophe (aha! We know we are looking at a poem!). Try experimenting with layouts: actually print out the poem with a different layout and consider its effects.
4. Symbolism: what is the prime symbol, allegory, and/or myth at work in a given poem? How can you tell? Does the poem seem to be aware of its symbolism? Is it using that symbolism effectively?
5. The affective center is a term for the predominant sense, feeling, communication, or embodied mood of a creative language work. That mood can range from a specific human feeling (righteous anger, for example) to an everyday sense (sometimes called “slice of life”) to an encounter not guided by a “speaker” but structured through, e.g., layout, collage, or graphemic work. What is the affective center of a given poem? How can you tell?
6. Representation: what is the primary representational work of the poem? Is it normative mimesis (what some think of as ‘invisible’ or ‘transparent’ language describing a situation of the extra-textual world)? Is it a nameable alternate mimesis: psychological inner space, animism, myth, or allegory?
7. Point of view/ Textual Subjectivity: some ideas about writing consider ‘point of view’ as equal to one person’s vantage point. Some emphasize the text’s attitudes as different from a human point of view. What is going on in this particular poem? Is the poem talking? Is the writer talking? Is there no ‘voice’ or are there many voices?

 

1. IV. ERR(o)R: treated responses to poems

Whether you use them for poems by someone else or by you, these revision techniques should be performed in good faith: embodying, demonstrating, and performing an argument about a poem’s style. The acronym “ERR(o)R” plays with the idea of “getting it right,” which often happens, as if by magic, when we revise with bold techniques.

Extension: Add a new portion IN THE SAME STYLE of that poem. This technique can be apt for a poem that seems to stop before it is finished; it is conceived as a “response” that stays very close to the poem. If you extend someone else’s poem, your stylistic imitation and extension work teaches you a new approach and can show how that particular poem’s style is achieved.

Rearrangement: re-shape the poem in a way that performs an argument about what kind of poem (realized, under-realized, alternately realized) it seems to be. Experiment with options for rearrangement: moving portions of the poem into different orders, taking out certain parts, beginning with what is now the last line, and so on.

Reorientation: Change lexical and phrasal matters to torque the affective or neutral tones of the poem. For example you might alter the verb types or tenses, the personal pronouns (add some if there are none, take them all out), select adjectives, punctuation, and so on. Imagine the poem is mobile or watery or like a color and shape spectrum that you can pull one direction and another to increase the sharp reds or the background blues, accomplishing this reorienting with words, spacing, surface areas, and punctuation.

Resistance: Write a poem in an OPPOSITE or strongly different style but with substantially the same “argument” or scene of the drafted poem. This option can be effective if you perceive the poem to be drafted in a style that is not allowing it to examine its real topic or energies. For example a “noisy” and long-line punctuated poem might be written as a quiet, short line, no-punctuation poem.

 

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EXERCISES (others will be assigned/carried out in class)

Exercise 1: Metric proceduralism

Here we’re thinking about the rhythm of meter, with an emphasis on standard and variation. Write at least eight lines in tetrameter. Tetrameter means 4 metric “feet” per “line,” in other words four rhythmic “stresses” per line. Don’t worry about getting your tetrameter perfect: for our first class, just give it a go and bring a printout of the resulting 8 or more lines, ready to read them aloud to each other and to discuss lines and rhythm. Below is a sample: the start of “The Chimney Sweeper,” a poem from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence (1789). Notice how its tetrameter lines create both “regular” rhythm and “irregular” rhythm. For more on the TWO versions of Blake’s poem, including image-copies of Blake’s copper plate etchings, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chimney_Sweeper

 

The Chimney Sweeper

When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue

Could scarcely cry ‘Weep! weep! weep! weep!'

So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

 

There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,

That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved; so I said,

‘Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head’s bare,

You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.'

 

And so he was quiet, and that very night,

As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight!—

That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,

Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.

 

Exercise 2: Collaborative text. Bring a text from one of your other classes: law, non-fiction, botany, anything with a fair quantity of language, and write in relation to it. For example: write a few words that come spontaneously to your mind, then attach, as a second part of your line, words from your collaborative text. Your line beginnings may be subject oriented (e.g. “I am hoping that” or “Today the sky” or “My mother told me”). They might be fragments (e.g. “unbelievably” or “Kurdish refugees” or “against her hair”). Write at least 10 lines with relative speed and assurance: you want to assemble rapidly from your confluences of material. Skip your eyes around on your collaborative text page; flip to another page to cull different second parts of your compositional lines. Then reverse the order: find fragments of language from your source texts to begin lines, then finish the lines with your “answering” words. Write at least 10 lines in this manner.

You may find yourself starting to skip back and forth, inserting line portions in different orders and places. This exercise aims for that sense of interpenetration. It is designed to heighten your practice in line composing and your awareness of apparent choice and non-choice in language access.

 

Exercise 3: Prompt lines. With lines provided from one or more outside sources, write response lines of your own. You can use text(s) from Exercise 2 or new sources. These can be poetry books, newspaper articles, dance lesson explanations, etc. Copy out multiple lines, sentences, or extended phrases from your source(s), then write “response” lines to those starting lines. After you have written at least 20 such lines, take away some or all of the prompt lines and collate your lines into a poem in any line order.

 

Exercise 4: Timing in composition. Working together as a group, with someone calling out tempo: alternate between composing fast and very slowly. Your attention should be fixed on the timing of your writing rather than its content as such. When the tempo caller indicates FAST, move your pen or keyboard through words at a rapid pace. When the tempo caller indicates SLOW, write one word at a time, moving down to the next line area (on page or screen) for each word so as to ensure a slow pace of composition. (“Slow” example: www.ubu.com/ubu/pdf/kent_sao.pdf)

If you are working this exercise on your own, you can use a metronome, the pace of your breath, or similar timing device. This exercise is designed to help you become more conscious of the kinds of words and syntax that result from different composition speeds. (Note that we are composing, not revising or editing, which come later in the writing process.)

 

Exercise 5: The House you Used to Live in. Details TBA.

 

Exercise 6: Computing poetry. Select one of the following options, or propose a different computing-based composition: use a networking platform (such as Twitter or Facebook) to generate a poem event, or use an application such as Flash to compose a poem using radiant (linked or altering) words and/or words + images, or use an online application to compose a poem using aleatory or transformational features.

 

Exercise 7: Translingual poetry. Find a poem in a foreign language that you can pronounce but not necessarily understand and do two things: first transliterate the poem into English using the sounds of your pronunciations, and second translate the poem word for word with the help of a bilingual dictionary. If you like, you can use an online translation engine. This exercise will strengthen your work in sounds, syllables, and syntax and give you experience in translingual writing.

 

Exercise 8: Open experiment choice. Select and carry out one experiment from Bernadette Meyer’s poetry experiments list at <writing.upenn.edu/library/Mayer-Bernadette_Experiments.html>. Consider, and prepare to discuss, what kind of experiment you are drawn to and what sort of knowing that experiment seems to expose and encourage.

This exercise fosters awareness about poetry choices, what you are drawn to, and the effects of particular poetic procedures. Some writers are drawn to ethics, some to impossibility, some to connection, some to sound effects, some to exposing the underbelly or flip side of normative social happenings involving identity, nation, gender, and so on. Knowing what you are drawn to can help you think about what procedures help you get there, and vice versa.

 

Exercise 9: Move-look-listen-touch. Leave your room and/or the classroom and move around in nearby areas, indoors and outdoors, to gather materials from the rhythm of moving, from sight images or touched signs, and from heard and/or overheard and/or lip-read sounds and conversation. Bring a notebook you can use to write your ‘specimen collecting’.

This exercise encourages a sense of bodily rhythms in writing, helps us think about relations between language images and other sensory images, and gives us source sounds or other senses we can bring in to a poem. After you gather your move-look-listen-touch materials, return to your study area/the classroom and figure out ways to bring the materials into one or more poems.

 

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