#discussiongroup

The Poetry and Poetics Reading Group run by Stephen Grace and Jack Quin have two more exciting events planned for the spring term, and we'd like to draw your attention to them here. 

Tuesday 24th February: We will be looking at T.S. Eliot's landmark poem 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', first published one hundred years ago, alongside John Berryman's essay 'Prufrock's Dilemma' (1960) and a selection from his sequence The Dream Songs (1969).

Tuesday 10th March: Professor Francis O'Gorman from the University of Leeds will be giving a paper on 'Swinburne and the Boers':

'Algernon Charles Swinburne's involvement in the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) has seemed to more than a century of readers evidence of his final betrayal of earlier liberal ideals. This paper argues that was not the case and explores the real issues at stake.'

Francis O'Gorman is Professor of Victorian Literature at the University of Leeds. He is the author of John Ruskin (1999), and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Culture (2010), Victorian Literature and Finance (2007), and the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to John Ruskin (2016).

His work on Swinburne includes several articles and a substantial new edition of the selected plays, prose, poetry, and fiction, entitled Oxford Twenty-first  Century Authors: Algernon Charles Swinburne (forthcoming 2015).

We think it would be wonderful if Poetry Society members wanted to come along to either of these events, and of course more of them, as the programme proceeds into the Summer Term. Lucy will be at both events for sure, and so contact her if you'd like to meet up beforehand ([email protected]). She thinks the event on the 24th February is particularly apt for Poetry Soc members following our 'Confessional Poetry' reading group in which we read some of Berryman's 'The Dream Songs', the suggestion courtesy of our very own Ordinary Member Minna!

The Poetry Society would like to advertise another vibrant poetry discussion group on behalf of its organisers: Poetry and Poetics Reading Group. We urge all Poetry Society members to come along to their events - they run an exciting and varied array of poetry-related discussions and lectures, and their meetings are open to and welcome all. The meetings are of a slightly more formal arrangement than our evening reading groups, and poems and articles are distributed in advance; this reading group is a fantastic opportunity for undergraduates to expand their ideas on poetry.

Poetry and Poetics is a reading group open to all students and staff with an interest in all things poetic. We examine a variety of texts, both poetic and critical, from a range of times and places and consider such recurrent questions as the function of poetic form, poetry's relation to history and the role of the individual poet. Meetings alternate between an open discussion of a selection of poems alongside a theoretical piece, and a staff-led presentation on a particular theme or issue within the study of poetry. The aim is for a conversation to emerge among readings of poetry, critical work, and an open network of outside concerns.

Seminars are hosted in the Berrick Saul Building (BS/007) on the Heslington West Campus of the University of York and begin at 6pm, unless stated otherwise. Interested staff and students from other universities are welcome to attend.