Five great poems

Great poems endure, and can speak to us vividly about both things we can readily recognise and things that seem very strange.

John Donne, poet and priest, greatly loved his wife Ann, but theirs was a clandestine marriage that cost him dearly. ‘John Donne, Ann Donne, Undone’, as he said; and his poem bidding farewell and promising return is one of his finest.

Andrew Marvell, poet and politician, wrote in ‘Bermudas’of a place he had never seen, but about the fate of which at the hands of his zealous countrymen he rightly worried.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet and philosopher, suffered from depression, and left one of the great records of it in ‘Dejection: An Ode’.

Robert Browning, poet and criminologist, made the dramatic monologue a high poetic art, and in ‘My Last Duchess’ imagined one of the coldest murderers on record.

And W. H. Auden, poet and critic, having seen war, in ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ responded with ferocious insight to the suffering and indifference in Breughel’s painting ‘The Fall of Icarus’.

Each commands attention in itself, but together they also explore the powers and craft of poetry.

No prior reading is required. The texts of the five poems are available on the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Each session will begin with a reading aloud, followed by discussion and critical analysis.

Learning outcomes:

1. To understand poetry as a craft; 
2. To gain a basic understanding of the five set texts;
3. To gain awareness of their contexts.

Session titles:

1. John Donne, ‘A Valediction Forbidding Mourning’
2. Andrew Marvell, ‘Bermudas’ 
3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘Dejection: An Ode’ 
4. Robert Browning, ‘My Last Duchess’ 
5. W. H. Auden, ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’

All course content will be delivered online via the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). You will be taught largely through a series of pre-recorded talks (which may be audio and/or video), designed to help you address different aspects of the main topic. You will normally have access to a range of useful resources and suggested activities.

There will also be an element of interactive work, and the opportunity for you to engage in written form with other course participants and discuss questions set by the Course Director via the Course Forum. The Course Director will generally respond to a selection of key questions and comments on a daily basis.

Some courses may also have elements of optional live discussions via Zoom.

There are no pre-requisites for courses, unless specified, and all are open to adult learners over 18 years old. Courses are taught at approximately first-year undergraduate level.

Content will be made available on each day of the course, Monday to Friday, from 8.00am BST. Course content will normally amount to c 1.5hrs per day across the 5 days, comprising of material delivered by the Course Director and activities/reading set, which would include discussions via the course forum. You may also need to complete reading or other preparation suggested in advance of the course.

We therefore suggest that you set aside approximately 1.5 hours of study per day to complete each day’s content and activities. However, this does not need to be done in one sitting, and you have the flexibility to access content when and where you want, and to go back and review it as often as you wish. Each course runs for one week and content will remain available to access on the VLE for 2 weeks after the course has finished.

A Certificate of Participation for the course(s) will be sent electronically, upon request via email, after the end of the Summer Festival. Details will be provided on the VLE.