The course
focuses on the main genres of writing. In the first year narrative theory
supplements the three core workshop modules of poetry, scriptwriting, and the
short story. The workshopping discipline of drafting and editing is always at
the forefront of study. The student is continually encouraged towards writing
fitness, through practice and discussion. Work is processed in a positive
environment.
The
emphasis in all the modules is on independent learning and reading. This is
developed through tutorials, workshops and peer appraisal: around twelve hours
a week contact time is added to regular development meetings with personal
tutors. Research and preparation for each session is demanding but garners best
results from workshop discussions.
Furthermore,
I was delighted, but not surprised, that Edge Hill was awarded the tenth Times Higher Education Awards University
of the Year, 2014. It has been a joy to study there and be instructed by an
enthusiastic and vibrant team of writers. It is a great university to study.
Waterloo: Midnight Vista
Barrel it
back from Blundellsands,
breeze
over the Seaforth span with
sodium arcs, straff beam guides. Flash
passed
a familiar vision:
Bootle
(most bombed British borough).
Who
knew? Who knows, Who cares? Coded
freight
containers, steel box mountain
fabrications,
never fails to a
maze:
colossal toy blocks, fairy
decking
lights, skeletal structures
crane. Not
gnomic but simple: roll-
on,
roll-off. Turbine guards twist winds
power,
translates kinetic to stored.
Hospice, October, 2013.
Wasteland,
edge land, liminal place
An atrium
entrance, temporary, cramped
filled with
flat pack, chopped chip office furniture.
Visitors
sign in, sign out, regulated.
Spend time
condemned, celled in comfort able
oblivion.
Angers well deep pop observed silences.
Where,
today or yesterday, I spoke to a childhood
giant, that
life valued times mine equals half this measure.
Exits
stance, weight for cellular replicative immortality
sustained
proliferative signals wait for space and the line...
No body comes here to die,
the
palliative stroke care team like to say.
Accumulated
mutations, carried by control protein P53,
strain
relations, causing love’s loss, and end scene.
Void,
filled by smells of absence, disinfects and sickening, body functions fail.
Reminds me
of metastasis: bowel, to belly, to brain. Meditate
watch
opiate bliss drip in. Activated invasions beat back
blasts of
radiation, induce angiogenesis growth factors.
Corrupted
structures multiply, triumph, evading growth suppressors.
Wall-tacked, religious
iconographies smile down benignly
eye red
read The Yagé letter’s, appendix six: cathartic, euphoric vision, vibrant
energy
unites all...pop! {:-(
Through a
glazed view note
grey bibbed
squirrelous creature
stripping
sapling bark
Poetics
As a writer
I am interested in the paradox of poetry. My poetry has an inherent conflict
between self expression and the egotistical ‘I’. I am not interested in the
‘genius-of-poets’ concept.
I am more
interested in the tension between the line and the sentence; less in meter, or
rhyme scheme. I am more interested in the line break, its relationship to the
clause, the sentence, the rhythms it creates and the pattern possibilities. I
am more interested in the turn of the line; more conspicuous line tension.
Rhythmic qualities excite me.
I am quite
interested in challenging formal, received and accepted wisdom. It is difficult
for me to battle a tendency towards declamation and epiphany. I am less
interested in messages.
I am more
interested in investigation into the use of language to confuse and obfuscate;
language as a refusal to communicate or to deliberately misinform.
I am really
interested in poetry as ventriloquism. Utterances conjuring, voicing the voiceless,
offering polyphony. I am more or less interested in figurative language like
the mist on the glass or the sun rising. I am more interested in metonymy and
juxtaposing binary opposites: smashing bits of language together.
Poetry as
performance is interesting except when it is not. I am interested in avant
garde as kitch. That is enough already, more or less.
I am more
interested in poetry as response to other cultural artifacts, literature,
visual art and music. I more interested in reference to the artifice than to
the illusion of it.
I am
interested in slips, accidents and mistakes. Poetry that makes no sense,
poetry of sound and concrete is
interesting.
To clarify
my interest in ambiguity: I am.
I am more
interested in language appropriation (transgressive), re-frame and montage;
less interested in making it up as I go along. All poetry is more or less
interesting to me. Why restrict oneself to a writing ghetto, when there is so
much of interest.
