ENG32180 Poetry in Performance

Academic Year 2024/2025

In brief this module considers ideas of poetic performance in terms of radio broadcast poetry, performance on the page and spoken word events, by focusing primarily on contemporary American Poetry and UK poetries. It has long been argued that Dylan Thomas’s readings in America during the 1950s and his broadcasts at the BBC altered the perception of how poetry can be performed. The module focuses on post WW2 poetry beginning with Thomas’s work. It reflects upon how American poets have also adapted their work for performance. Key texts considered may include the following: Thomas’s Under Milk Wood and poetry broadcasts at the BBC; Lawrence Ferlighetti's "Beat" performances, Sylvia Plath’s BBC commissioned poem play for radio Three Women and Amiri Baraka’s early performance / spoken word poetry. Attention will be given to how migration and assimilation are addressed in Asian-American poet Li Young Lee's work. We will also consider the impact of UK Caribbean poets (Linton Kwesi Johnson and Jeana ‘Binta’ Breeze) on ideas of poetic performance and contemporary UK poets (such as Jay Bernard's investigation of the Windrush Scandal, New Cross Fire and Grenfell tragedy). There will also be the opportunity to reflect upon how recent American poets enact or perform the lyric self in their work (Lyn Hejinian and Language Poetries).

Attention will be given to textual experimentation and how poems address their readers and audience. Seminars will also give us an opportunity to listen to the way in which poems are performed through radio recordings and recordings of live performances on the web. Crucially, throughout the module we will examine the representation of race and ethnicity as well as the enacting of subjectivity and gender through poetic performance.