Each lecture will discuss techniques and structures central to vital imagery and compelling voice, examining these techniques in action through close analysis of selected poetry and prose. Workshop exercises will then stimulate the student to apply these discoveries to their own writing, challenging them to experiment with aspects of image and voice through direct engagement with the page. Work-in-progress generated by these exercises will be presented weekly for constructive critique online and within workshop sessions, producing a portfolio for final assessment.

Lectures will be delivered simultaneously in real-time face-to-face and online. For lectures face-to-face attendance is the desired mode, but students can find links that enable their participation online on the Moodle page for this paper.

Lecturer-delivered content will also be video recorded and made available to anyone who cannot attend lectures in real time via Moodle.

Students who need to attend Workshop online should enrol in Workshop A, the Wednesday 4-6pm session, which will be delivered online.

Texts:

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Course Reader: available for purchase from Campus Copy, containing selected poetry and prose extracts from the following:

SECTION A: POETRY

Billy Collins, ‘Introduction to Poetry.’

Zbigniew Herbert, ‘Five Men.’

Adrienne Rich, ‘Diving into the Wreck.’

Archibald McLeish, ‘Ars Poetica.’

Olivia Macassey, ‘Outhwaite Park.’

Emma Neale, ‘Confessional Poem.’

Ruby Solly, ‘tūī.’

Tayi Tibble, ‘Identity Politics.’

Shivani Agrawal, ‘Notes on my tongue.’

Rhegan Tu’akoi, ‘to be brown / not brown.’

Miriama Gemmell, ‘off the endangered list.’

Hana Pera Aoake, ‘The bigger the burn the tougher you are.’

Olivia Macassey ‘A & E.’

Rae Varcoe, ‘How Can I Tell You This In 30 Minutes?’

Honor Moore, ‘Mourning Pictures.’

Lynn Emanuel, ‘Frying Trout While Drunk.’

Vincent O’Sullivan, ‘Surfacing.’

James Brown, ‘The End of the Runway.’

Philip Larkin, ‘This be the Verse.’

Wallace Stevens, ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.’

Alice Te Punga Somerville, ‘Rakau.’

Dinah Hawken, ‘Talking to a Tree Fern.’

Anna Smaill, ‘Apples.’

Beverley Farmer, ‘Figs.’

Sylvia Plath, ‘Mirror.’

Craig Raine, ‘A Martian Sends a Postcard Home.’

Sonja Yelich, ‘1YA.’

Sonja Yelich, ‘writing desk.’

Lynn Emanuel, ‘Single Girl. One Room Flat.’

Hone Tuwhare, ‘To A Maori figure cast in bronze outside the Chief Post Office, Auckland.’

Trixie Te Arama Menzies, ‘Maui Steals Time.’

Ben Brown, ‘I am the Maori Jesus.’

Louise Erdrich, ‘Painting of a White Gate and Sky.’

Jayne Anne Phillips, ‘Wedding Picture.’

Gregory O’Brien, ‘Walking Woman.’

Sonya Yelich, ‘whangaparoa – on the sundeck.’

Sharon Olds, ‘I Go Back to May 1937.’

Anne Sexton, ‘Baby Picture.’

Helen Chasin, ‘The Word Plum.’

Mark Strand, ‘Eating Poetry.’

Donna Masini, ‘Cherry Ice.’

Denise Levertov, ‘O Taste and See.’

Sharon Olds, 'Sex Without Love.'

Sharon Olds, 'I Cannot Forget the Woman in the Mirror.'

Natasha Saje, ‘Creation Story.’

Emma Neale, ‘Four and Seven’ and ‘The Artist’s Models Reply.’

Hone Tuwhare, ‘Inconspicuously Sensual.’

Rachel McAlpine, ‘Burning the Liberty Bodice.’

Emily Dickinson, ‘It Was not Death,’ ‘The Soul has Bandaged moments’ & ‘I felt a Funeral in my Brain.’

John Donne, ‘Holy Sonnet XIV.’

Philip Larkin, ‘The Trees.’

Steven Cramer, ‘Villanelle After a Burial.’

Sylvia Plath, ‘Mad Girl’s Love Song.’

Dylan Thomas, ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.’

Mary Stanley, ‘Sestina.’

Dan Lechay, ‘Ghost Villanelle.’

Bill Manhire, ‘Erebus Voices: The Mountain’ and ‘Erebus Voices: The Dead.’

Alice Te Punga Somerville, ‘mad ave.’

SECTION B: PROSE:

Lorrie Moore, 'How to Become a Writer.'

Michelle Rahurahu, ‘whakarongo.’

Alice Tawhai, ‘Old Ways.’

Patrick White, 'Down at the Dump'

Anne Enright,The Gathering

Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries

Maurice Duggan, ‘Along Rideout Road That Summer’

Ronald Hugh Morrieson, The Scarecrow

Luke Davies, Candy

Tim Winton, The Turning

Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the

Night-Time

Helen Zahavi, Dirty Weekend

Ernest Hemingway 'Hills Like White Elephants'

Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

Airana Ngarewa, ‘Pātea Pools’

Don de Lillo, Underworld

Rick Moody, The Ice Storm

Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain

Handouts detailing workshop exercises will be circulated during each lecture.

CONTENT NOTE: The readings on this paper engage with the embodied world and may touch on sensitive and confronting material, such as violence, sexuality and suicide. Some of this content could be emotionally and intellectually challenging. I will do my best to signal more specific content warnings for relevant texts, and to engage with difficult content empathetically and sensitively within our class discussions, but if you think that reading and discussing these texts might present extra challenges for you please let me or your tutors know so that we can identify strategies to support you.