ENGL 698/598 Topic 02 - Studies in Creative Writing/The Book-Length Manuscript (Poetry)
Instructor: Prof. Tom Wayman
Tuesday, 19:00- 21:30
Mail to: twayman [at] ucalgary [dot] ca
Course Description:
English 698.02/ 598.02 (Poetry) is an advanced course in writing poetry, during which students will complete by April 2009 a book-length manuscript of their poems of at least 50 pages. The course will offer a workshop/seminar providing an intense assessment and analysis of student work-in-progress, as well as practical information on magazine and book publication and the writing life--including how to deal with acceptance and rejection, fame and obscurity. The diminished cultural status of poetry in 21st Century Canada will be pondered.
The course will weigh a variety of approaches to language, structure and content used in contemporary poetry, with a focus on lyric and narrative poems. Among the compositional strategies to be examined will be the hypotactic and paratactic (grammatically coherent and leaping poetries), and the apophatic and cataphatic (poems of denial and of direct naming). Students will be expected to write and revise steadily throughout both Fall and Winter Sessions, offer intelligent and informed critiques of classmates' writing, literary magazines, and published contemporary critical and creative authors. Students must attend literary readings out of class time, perform at a class reading, and be able to clearly articulate both orally and in writing their own goals and practices as a literary artist. Strategies of book organization and marketing will be covered, and students will engage the normal literary life of their era by submitting poems to literary magazines as well as developing a marketing plan for their own completed manuscript.
Grades will be based 60 per cent on contractual creative assignments (submission of approximately 30 pages of poems each term, and completion of the book-length manuscript with accompanying critical introduction), and 40 per cent on graded critical (written) responses to a variety of material, including collections of poems, critical articles, a selection of literary magazines, publishing houses' lists and orientations, etc.
Admission to the class is by a 20-page portfolio accompanied by a one-page written proposal describing the book-length project the student wishes to complete during the course. Previous attainment of at least an intermediate level of poetic skill, and a strong interest in publishing one's writing are assumed.
By August 15 students will submit for consideration to the English Department main office their portfolio, along with their project proposal, and a completed 698.02/598.02 admission form. The latter questionnaire will be available at the Department office by the end of April, and will also be downloadable from the Department website. By August 29, the Department and Registrar will have a list of students accepted for the course.
NOTE: This course is double-numbered as both a graduate and senior undergraduate offering. Evidence of significant extra perspicacity about course materials will be expected of graduate students.
Texts and Readings
Texts will include:
Kimmy Beach, in (sic) Cars
Robert Bly, The Night Abraham Called to the Stars
Joyce Cary, The Horse's Mouth (novel on surviving as an artist)
book by a poet visiting campus during 08-09
Readings will include (probably in a Course Pack):
Aga Shahid Ali, "Introduction" to Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English Gene Doty, "When I Say 'Ghazal' I Mean 'Ghuzzle'" Reginald Gibbons, "On Apophatic Poetics" Robert von Hallberg, "Lyric Thinking" Edward Hirsch, "The Duende" Susan Kolodny, "Writing and the Psyche's Assessment of Danger" Alan Soldofsky, "The Lyric Self: Artifice and Authenticity in Recent American Poetry"