Notes from class #2

I'll start today's notes with a short poem from Janurary 22nd 2012. The lecturer of that day got all 300 or so students to write a poem explaining who we are. I wrote:

I am a boyish girl

And a superhero-detective-artist

DEFENDER of books

Tall ambitions.

It's an awful poem.


Notes From Class (now with more pictures!):

Little Red Riding more a cautionary tale than a fairytale

You can't separate thought from language

"The medium of drama is not words, but people moving around on the stage using words"

Expressing my melodramatic side in the bottom margin.

"To understand the poems, one must imagine one has written them"

Synecdoche - part figures the whole

Naturalists need to select/contrive parts of the world in such a manner that the relevance is in the real world itself

I remember this day so clearly. The trains were all delayed so I was
going to be late - so I thought about skipping class and going to China
Town instead, for a well-deserved vegetable steamed bun.

"The space around a poem is not blank space, but silence."

Can art be reduced to an ideology?

Modernity: sense of inhabiting the modern world, living in moment

As I've said before, university isn't fun 100% of the time.
I was SO BORED in this lecture.

Most poetry uses verse, but not all verse achieves the status of poetry. Prose doesn't subscribe to verse despite some writers attempting it.

Prose is to poetry as walking is to dancing.

Reality adheres to the imagination.

My talents know no bounds.

"Being a good poet is not about waving as many poetry flags your hands can hold."

"The creative process is never clean, never tidy. Flowing emotion like a punctured carton of ribena."

Larkin chose art over marriage.

I'm curious to know what the other half of
this conversation was.

Who narrates? Who is the narrative addressed to (narratee)? Does the narrator participate in the story or remain outside it? Does the narrator knows everything, only what a specific character thinks/feels, or only what characters actually do and say (external view)? Does the narrator speak in their own voice or adopt the voice of a character? Do the events happen in order?

Metonymy - compressed metaphor, omission of phrases

We use more standar language when we're focused on what we say
OR
We change our speech depending on who we think is listening

Thank you and goodnight.

Notes from class #1

So I might have mentioned that I finished university. Over the past three years, I've been writing notes in class - I've got six notebooks to show for my hard work. Except... I wasn't always writing notes about the book or poem we were studying. I have decided to write a collection of posts dedicated to the things I learnt in class - or the things I wrote in my notebook while supposedly learning in class. I give you...

Notes From Class

Three Principles of Poems:

A game of hangman from a seminar
that wasn't that interesting, clearly.

1. Sex
2. Death
3. Writing poetry

Chaucer: the father of English poetry

Imitation isn't plagiarism - positive

Romantic idea of the rebel

A cardinal sin! -describe/identify feature of verse with no analysis - need relevancy

Female: biology
Feminine: behaviour
Feminist: separates biology from behaviour

Snakes don't have ears. Snakes are lactose intolerant. Snakes can't travel on rope.

Apotheosis: turning into a minor divinity e.g. stars

Ideal narrator and reader share beliefs about the story.

Thou = you
Thy = your

Reformed alcoholic - transcendence?

Reality can only be accessed through subjectivity. Language gets in the way of reality.

Titles may be suggestive

Short stories focus on single interaction of character - before and after aren't necessary. Novels require coherence in plot, everything must be planned and explained.

The classic

I recently visited Lisbon with my girlfriend and her family, and on my way back to London, I was an hour early for my flight. So I browsed the very tiny airport, looking for a way to throw away the euros burning a hole in my pocket. I then came across this beauty:

At €6 it was a bargain for something so beautiful. It definitely was not something that I needed (I literally found a notebook in my room the other day and thought to myself "when did I get this??" because I have so many). But when I saw it, I knew it was something that would fit perfectly into my life. Why? Because I'm going to America for 49 days in October.

Sinners' Club

Nope, I'm not talking about a group of people who stand outside a church and snipe about how they're not going to get into Heaven (although I did just realise that the title of today's post would make an excellent book title... Hm...). The English Society at my university puts on poetry reading events once a term, dim the lights and call it "Sinners' Club". One of the highlights of this is that throughout the evening, attendees are encouraged (after consuming glorious amounts of free wine) to write an anonymous confession on a piece of paper, which then gets handed out at random at the end. Each one is read out. Nobody knows who confessed what. It is marvellous.

I recently read at Sinners' Club and got a friend to film me. I mean, I did the same thing last term, too, but well, we don't speak of that incident any more (my other well-meaning friend totally forgot and to this day cannot say sorry enough). All the readers were asked to write a short introduction and the president of the society read them out, which is why mine is so short and to the point. My rule is usually "when in doubt, make a joke about yourself". Anyway, without further preamble, here is me being totally awkward and reading my poetry: