Interrogating Influence: Traditions in Poetry
Understanding our ancestors; form and freedom in anglophone poetics.
This course dives headfirst into the murky waters of Anglo-American poetic traditions, to see how contemporary English-language poetry has been informed by them, and, by extension, how our own new poems might also use these influences.
Along the way, we will encounter the sonnet, in its myriad variations, the villanelle and sestina, whether failed or complete, plays, odes, epics, and anti-epics. We will be reading as many as humanly possible of: Wyatt, Rosetti, Shakespeare, Spenser, Terrence Hayes, Dianne Seuss, Hopkins, Keats, Shelley, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Aimé Cesaire, Elizabeth Bishop, Dylan Thomas, Horace, Pindar, Whitman, Neruda, Lucille Clifton, Langston Hughes, Homer, Pound, Walcott, and more. Through this plentiful reading list, we will carve out our own spaces in these formal traditions, or explode them.
5 fortnightly sessions over 10 weeks, starting 17 January 2025. No live chats. Suitable for UK & International students.
Concessions & Accessibility
To apply for a concessionary rate, please send relevant documentation showing your eligibility for one of our concessions to [email protected]. Conditions of eligibility are detailed here. If you have any questions or wish to be added to the waiting list of a sold-out course, please email [email protected]. For more information visit our Online Courses page.
Image credit: @giamboscaro
About Andrew Wells 
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Andrew Wells is the author of two chapbooks, SEALED (Hesterglock, 2020) and Menacing Sense (Osmanthus, 2021). His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Rialto, Poetry Wales, The London Magazine, Amberflora, The Scores, SAND Journal, and others. His recent writing is concerned with disorientation, anxiety among new ecologies, and being under the weather. He is co-editor of HVTN Press and an MFA Candidate at Columbia University.
"The poetry school is so important not just for teaching poetry at all levels but for creating a community. There are no other such hubs and communities in the UK."
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