ENGL 4323/5713 X2*
“Experimental Poetry: Poetics, Women, Writings, and the Senses”*
Winter Term: MA-Honours Blended Seminar
Instructor: Dr. Anne Quéma
This course explores experimental practices of poetry in the UK in the late 20th- and early 21st centuries with a focus on women poets. The first objective will be to establish a sense of the history of experimental poetic practices in the UK and to locate contemporary women poets in this genealogy. Second, our discussion of poetry will revolve around the relationship between poetic language and the ways in which we relate to the world and others through our sensorial bodies. Our analysis will derive from the reading of texts by thinkers such as Judith Butler, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Antonio Domasio, who have reflected on the role of the body and the senses in the development of subjectivity and consciousness. Third, we will explore the ways in which various poets resort to textual, multimedial, and multisensorial strategies to mediate their relationship to the world in historical, social, gender, and political terms. Our approach to experimental poetry will take full advantage of a wealth of auditory and visual material available on the Internet through poetic databases in the UK and YouTube.