POETRY AS MEMORABLE SPEECH: CLOSE READINGS OF FIVE FAMOUS POEMS

Dr Peter Anderson, senior lecturer, Department of English, University of Cape Town

Some poems stick in the mind (Auden called poetry ‘memorable speech’), and some stick in the so-called canon – which is not, nor should be, the stable hierarchy of middle-class ‘taste’ that it has been for years. Nonetheless, this series aims to read five more-or-less ‘mainstream’ poems in a way that argues for their greatness and, more especially, teaches the lay reader how to get to grips with a poem more thoroughly.

LECTURE TITLES

1. John Donne: ‘The Good Morrow’

2. Charlotte Smith: ‘Written in the Church-Yard at Middleton in Sussex’

3. Robert Lowell: ‘Skunk Hour’

4. Philip Larkin: ‘The Whitsun Weddings’

5. Jeremy Cronin: ‘Walking on Air’

Copies of the poems will be provided.