This module examines the development of French poetry in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. Situating recent poetic writing in relation to previous literary movements and traditions, it engages with the practice and theory of poetry at once as linguistic experiment and existential questioning. Emphasis will be placed on the essential opening poetry performs as an endlessly renewed but also often fraught interaction between word and world, in a time of accelerated change and unprecedented global crisis. New forms of lyricism that embody this vital opening will be explored through the works of three poets: Guillevic, Yves Bonnefoy and Bernard Noël.