Reminder: Reading on Wednesday 26/3

Firstly, I'm pasting in this email I've been sent by Michele Leggott, to remind you of her open invitation to the first in her ongoing series of readings by local and student writers:

POETRY READING
AT OGH LOUNGE 26 MARCH, 5-7 PM
ALL WELCOME!

LOUNGE #1 WEDNESDAY 26 MARCH
Old Government House Lounge, Princes St and Waterloo Quadrant, 5-7 pm

Featuring local poets and student writers:

Rosetta Allan
Helena Dunn
Rowan French
Bernard Griffen
Joanna Grochowicz
Tim Heath
Dena Pezet
Chris Price
Jack Ross
Kirsten Warner

Free entry. Food and drinks for sale in the Buttery. Information:
Michele Leggott
m.leggott@auckland.ac.nz
373 7599 x87342
POSTER: http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/events/lounge01_poster.pdf

The LOUNGE readings are a continuing project of the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre (nzepc), Auckland University Press and Auckland University English Department in association with the Staff Common Room Club at Old Government House.

Secondly, I've made a poetry tape for each of you to supplement the Course Anthology. I can pass them on to Mary to give to you at our next session, on Monday 7th April. Or, alternatively, if you'd rather not wait that long, I can bring them along to the reading on Wednesday. Whichever suits you best.

Poetry Session 1: Howe / Leggott

[Holloway Press]

"Into the Archive" was the theme of the session, and that's one reason why I brought quite so many books and papers along with me.

A close parallel can be seen between Susan Howe's work on Emily Dickinson and other "submerged" New England women writers and visionaries (not to mention ambiguous figures such as Charles Peirce and Herman Melville) and Michele Leggott's work on New Zealand equivalents such as Robin Hyde, Ursula Bethell and Lola Ridge (not to mention the sixties and seventies writers she and her fellow-editors Murray Edmond and Alan Brunton unearthed for Big Smoke (AUP, 2000)).

Susan Howe's complex layouts, visual sensibility, and methods of poetic sampling also proved useful when we attempted to read some of the more experimental pages in Leggott's DIA (1994), though the differences between their poetic projects become more and more apparent from this point on. Howe's obsession with the bloody implications of past repression and normalisation are quite tonally distinct from Leggott's more affectionate celebration of an overlooked past of gardens, beaches, family albums and romantic love.

We discussed, in this connection, "Dear Heart," from Leggott's second book Swimmers, Dancers (AUP, 1991), but then went on to examine her own version of the Ishtar / Persephone myth: the seven gates of the underworld in the form of meditations on her growing blindness in "a woman, a rose, and what has it to do with her or they with one another" (from as far as I can see (AUP, 1999)).

At this point, paradoxically, we noted an opening up and enlargement of Leggott's poetic work, in the expansive Milk and Honey (AUP, 2005) and (more recently) the deluxe art-book Journey to Portugal (Holloway Press, 2007). Gretchen Albrecht's colourful collages in the latter book also emphasise how much Leggott has continued to concentrate on the visual arts, rather than moving her poetic palette into imagery of touch and sound - as some reviewers seemed to expect of her after as far as I can see.

This - rather astonishing - enlarging of her poetry is the note we ended on. The next session will be on Nigel Cox, so make sure you've read Dirty Work before then.

[NB: I've put up some new links to sound recordings of Susan Howe and Peter Reading. Recordings of the New Zealand poets are all accessible in the AUP collections Classic and Contemporary NZ Poets in Performance (2006-7).]

Interview with Paul Muldoon

My plan is to put up a post after each session, giving a rough overview of what we covered, and also any further points you might like to explore over the next fortnight.

There wasn't time for much more than the "Make yourself a Susan Howe poem" exercise in our first, introductory, meeting, but I'm hoping to make up for that tonight.

There's an interesting interview with Paul Muldoon in the Listener for February 23-38 (pp.36-38). There are various points there about the influence (or, rather, the long shadow) of Seamus Heaney over his work which will be helpful for our purposes, I think.

One critical expression to ponder might be the anxiety of influence, a theory outlined in Harold Bloom's classic 1973 book of the same title. I quote from his own summary:

Every poem is a misinterpretation of a parent poem. A poem is not an overcoming of anxiety, but is that anxiety. Poets' misinterpretations of poems are more drastic than critics' misinterpretations or criticism, but this is only a difference in degree and not at all in kind. There are no interpretations but only misinterpretations, and so all criticism is prose poetry.

This very influential idea is found throughout Muldoon's recent book of essays, The End of the Poem (2006), where he appears to argue that every other poem that ever existed can be cited as a clue for understanding the one under discussion ...

Administration Guide: Further Reading

Prescribed Texts:

Fiction:

Cox, Nigel. Dirty Work. 1987. Wellington: VUP, 2006.

Jones, Lloyd. Mr Pip. Auckland: Penguin, 2006.

Neale, Emma. Relative Strangers. Auckland: Vintage, 2006.

Randall, Charlotte. Within the Kiss. Auckland: Penguin, 2002.

Poetry:

Book of Readings [available from student notes in Quad Block B basement]

Suggested Further Reading:

[More specific lists of relevant secondary reading will be posted here during the course of the year]

Poetry:

Broom, Sarah. Contemporary British and Irish Poetry: An Introduction. Houndmills, Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Classic New Zealand Poets in Performance. Ed. Jack Ross & Jan Kemp. Auckland: Auckland UP, 2006.

Contemporary New Zealand Poets in Performance. Ed. Jack Ross & Jan Kemp. Auckland: Auckland UP, 2007.

New New Zealand Poets in Performance. Ed. Jack Ross & Jan Kemp. Auckland: Auckland UP, 2008.

Martin, Isabel. Reading Peter Reading. Newcastle: Bloodaxe, 2000.

Administration Guide: Assignments

NB: This is a 30-point paper, 100 percent internally assessed.

Submit assignments either in the Assignment slot on level 2 of the Atrium building, or directly to either Mary or myself during the workshop.

The work you hand in should adhere to the following guidelines:

• Typed.
• Double-spaced.
• Written on one side only of A4 sheets.
• Margins at least 2.5 cm (1 inch) all around (including top and bottom).

The marks will be divided up as follows:

Creative Response

Worth: 20 %
Due in: Session 4
Length: up to 3 pages

This is the first piece you will be handing in. We invite you to take off on a creative tangent from one of the authors or pieces presented in the course. Your own piece might take the form of a poem or poetic sequence, a piece of fiction, a script, or even a picture or pagework. Let us know what you have in mind, and we can discuss it further.

Journal

Worth: 20 %
Due in: Sessions 4 & 12
Length: up to 4,000 words in final form

This should be a series of thoughts and reactions to the materials and ideas covered in the course kept throughout the year. We expect at least some reaction to each of the authors, presented either as straight journal entries or in the form of an online blog. you’re welcome to contribute to this blog.

You may wish to set up your own linked companion blog instead, however.

You will be asked to submit your journal twice in the year. The first time for general reactions and comment, the second time for assessment.

Seminars

Worth: 20 %
Due in: by Session 10
Length: c.4-5 pages

You will be asked to give two seminars in the course of the year – one on themes, ideas, or texts primarily associated with the poetry section of the course and the other predominantly on issues associated with fiction. You should aim at giving one in each semester, but we’ll try to be flexible when it comes to scheduling the presentations.

The seminar should be roughly fifteen minutes long, with an additional fifteen minutes set aside for questions, making up a full half-hour.

The seminars will be assessed in terms of content and presentation but you will not be required to present them in written form. It is envisaged that you will develop one of your seminars into your Research Essay. In the seminar you should: aim to interest other students in the text and topic, outline the issues raised by your topic, indicate some interesting ways of looking at the question, and find ways to engage your audience in active exchanges concerning the topic.

Preparation of the seminar should act both as brainstorming and a plan for your eventual Research essay.

Research Essay

Worth: 40 %
Due in: 17th October
Length: up to 5,000 words

This is your major piece of work for the year:

It can be an extended literary-critical examination of one (or more) of the authors, works or themes discussed during the year.

If you wish, you can present your research essay online – on the model of one of the essays linked to author pages on the nzepc – and link or attach it to the course website.

Alternatively, you might like to take a more creative approach and do a piece of writing (perhaps in the manner of Susan Howe or Anne Carson) which incorporates research and innovative form.

The seminar (whether it be the first or second that you give) in which you discuss the scope and ramifications of the project you have in mind, must have been presented to the class by session 10.

Administration Guide: Timetable

Meetings: 3 hours Fortnightly (Monday 4-7 pm / AT 3.49).

WEEK:

1 - (3/3): Introduction [MP / JR]

2 - (17/3): Poetry: Howe / Leggott [JR]

(21/3-4/4): [EASTER]

3 - (7/4): Fiction: Dirty Work [MP]

4 - (21/4): Poetry: Harlow / Carson [JR]

Creative Response (20%)
& first presentation of Journal

5 - (5/5): Fiction: Within the Kiss [MP]

6 - (19/5): Poetry: Graham Lindsay [JR]

(30/5-11/7): [MID-YEAR BREAK]

7 - (14/7): Poetry: Reading / Muldoon [JR]

8 - (28/7): Fiction: Relative Strangers [MP]

9 - (11/8): Fiction: Mr Pip [MP]

(25/8-5/9): [MID-SEMESTER BREAK]

10 - (8/9): Poetry: Fiona Farrell [JR]

11 - (22/9): Fiction [MP]

12 - (6/10): Conclusion [MP / JR]

Journal (20%)

(17/10):

Research Essay (40%)

Suitable dates for each of your two Seminar presentations (each worth 10% of the final grade) should be chosen in consultation with Mary Paul or Jack Ross, depending on whether the major focus is on fiction or poetry.