Contemporary Poetry seminars, Fall 2016 to Spring 2022

At the end of December 2022, I thought I'd update this post of the list of books for the seminars on Contemporary Poetry that I have taught at the English Department of the University of Basel from Fall Semester 2016 to Spring Semester 2022 to include the courses in Fall 2020 and Spring 2022:

Fall 2016

• Ian Duhig, The Blind Roadmaker, Picador 978-1509809813
• Sarah Howe, Loop Of Jade, Chatto & Windus 978-0701188696
• Major Jackson, Roll Deep, Norton 978-0393246896
• Melissa Lee-Houghton, Sunshine, Penned in the Margins 978-1908058386
• Tracy K. Smith, Life On Mars, Graywolf 978-1555975845
• C. Dale Young, The Halo, Four Way Books 978-1935536680

Fall 2017

• Jericho Brown, "The New Testament", Copper Canyon Press 978-1556594571
• Imtiaz Dharker, "Over the Moon", Bloodaxe 978-1780371207
• Rebecca Gayle Howell, "American Purgatory", Eyewear 978-1911335443
• Jee Leong Koh, "Steep Tea", Carcanet 978-1847772275
• Kei Miller, "The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion", Carcanet 978-1847772671
• Patricia Lockwood, "Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals", Penguin 978-0141984865

Spring 2018

·      Patience Agbabi, Telling Tales, Canongate, 978-1782111573

·      Sinead Morrissey, On Balance, Carcanet, 978 1 784103 60 6

·      Pascale Petit, Mama Amazonica, Bloodaxe, 9781780372945

·      Denise Riley, Say Something Back, Picador, 9781447270379

·      Danez Smith, Don't Call Us Dead, Chatto & Windus, 978-1784742041

·      Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, When the Wanderers Come Home, University of Nebraska Press, 978-0-8032-8857-7

Fall 2019

·      Geoff Brock, "Voices Bright Flags", Waywiser Press 2013, 978-1904130-64-2

·      Tishani Doshi, "Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods", Bloodaxe 2018, 978-1780371979

·      Terrance Hayes, "American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin", Penguin 2018, 978-0141989112

·      Joanne Limburg, "The Autistic Alice", Bloodaxe 2017, 978-1780373430

·      Patricia Smith, "Incendiary Art", Bloodaxe 2019, 978-1780374710

·      George Szirtes, "Mapping the Delta", Bloodaxe 2016, 978-1780373201

Fall 2020

·      A. E. Stallings, Like, Farrar Strauss & Giroux 2018, 9780374187323

·      Bhanu Kapil, How to Wash a Heart, Pavilion Poetry 2020, 9781789621686

·      John McCullough, Reckless Paper Birds, Penned in the Margins 2019, 9781908058638

·      Reginald Dwayne Betts, Felon, Norton 2019, 9780393652147

·      Sandra Simonds, Atopia, Wesleyan Poetry 2019, 9780819579041

·      Vahni Capildeo, Skin Can Hold, Carcanet 2019, 9781784107314

 

Spring 2022

 

·      Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic, Faber and Faber

·      Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Living Weapon, Faber and Faber

·      Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem, Faber and Faber

·      Mary Jean Chan, Flèche, Faber and Faber

·      Vidyan Ravinthiran, The Million-petalled Flower of Being Here, Bloodaxe

·      Sumita Chakraborty, Arrow, Carcanet

 

 

Get Up Before Dawn

Yesterday, I did a seven-minute automatic-writing exercise with the students in my creative-writing course, "Songs and Poems Were All We Needed" (it's a poetry and songwriting course). Then I had them do some things with the texts they'd written, which led to each of them having one sentence to write. We put all the sentences together into a poem, added a few conjunctions, and gave the poem a title and an author: Rose Thornton, who was also well-known as a war correspondent in World War II.

Get Up Before Dawn

Rose Thornton (1914-1984)

I just sit on my floor in the spot that gets warmed by the sun,

and my problems are my own to solve.

I see my neighbours’ rose garden.

To some, nightfall brings nightmares and fears; to me, it brings comfort and ideas.

So I eat, eat and eat.

Then, if I could, I would fly amongst the stars, unburdened and unfaltering.

Soon, my right hand starts cramping, and I find that quite annoying.

I can’t stand people before dawn, if ever,

yet the warmth of her bed still lingers on her skin

while I’m unhappy. In conclusion, same shit, different day — but at least tea’s ready

because the dragons bring the ashen rain. The world is dying, but my heart’s aflame.

Talk instead of touch, and that’s all right. The week goes by, and we meet again.

So I carry the financial weight of our little family.

It’s as if there’s something in the darkness waiting for me to wake up.

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"pale, absorbent fields of paper": A blackboard on Geoffrey Brock's "Family History: Oct. 15, 1848"

The fall semester has started, so it's time for another blackboard. This is from my Contemporary Poetry course this morning. As an introduction to the course, we discussed a poem by Geoffrey Brock from his book Voices Bright Flags, which we will be discussing for the next two weeks.

Family History: Oct. 15, 1848

Geoffrey Brock, Voices Bright Flags, 58

The instruments were various:

the hollow pens that spilled their inks

on pale, absorbent fields of paper;

the notion that land belongs to men;

apologetic rhetoric

("the force of circumstance" and "hard

necessity"); the trade in rum

and viruses; and guns, of course;

and love: in Texas, a decade after

New Echota and the Trail of Tears,

an Alabama Cherokee

with rivers of hair and broken eyes

married a white man. He was disowned;

she fell into the pool of us and drowned.

Note from Voices Bright Flags 99:

The parenthetical quotations (which I found in Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States) are from Sen. Edward Everett's explanation of his decision, in 1836, to vote to ratify the Treaty of New Echota, which authorized the forcible relocation of the Cherokee Nation from the southeast to present-day Oklahoma.

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"I found I was standing": Three blackboards on Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go"

The blackboards from my class's discussion on 6 May of a passage from Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. This passage, to be precise, which is the last paragraph of the novel: 

            I found I was standing before acres of ploughed earth. There was a fence keeping me from stepping into the field, with two lines of barbed wire, and I could see how this fence and the cluster of three or four trees above me were the only things breaking the wind for miles. All along the fence, especially along the lower line of wire, all sorts of rubbish had caught and tangled. It was like the debris you get on a sea-shore: the wind must have carried some of it for miles and miles before finally coming up against these trees and these two lines of wire. Up in the branches of the trees, too, I could see, flapping about, torn plastic sheeting and bits of old carrier bags. That was the only time, as I stood there, looking at that strange rubbish, feeling the wind coming across those empty fields, that I started to imagine just a little fantasy thing, because this was Norfolk after all, and it was only a couple of weeks since I’d lost him. I was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic in the branches, the shore-line of odd stuff caught along the fencing, and I half-closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I’d ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and gradually get larger until I’d see it was Tommy, and he’d wave, maybe even call. The fantasy never got beyond that—I didn’t let it—and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn’t sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.

"So he had fallen": A blackboard on James Baldwin's "Go Tell It On The Mountain"

The blackboard from my class's discussion on 4 October, 2018, of a passage from James Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain. This passage, to be precise:

So he had fallen: for the first time since his conversion, for the last time in his life. Fallen: he and Esther in the white folks’ kitchen, the light burning, the door half-open, grappling and burning beside the sink. Fallen indeed: time was no more, and sin, death, Hell, the judgement were blotted out. There was only Esther, who contained in her narrow body all mystery and all passion, and who answered all his need. Time, snarling so swiftly past, had caused him to forget the clumsiness, and sweat and dirt of their first coupling; how his shaking hands undressed her, standing where they stood, how her dress fell at length like a snare about her feet; how his hands tore at her undergarments so that the naked, vivid flesh might meet his hands; how she protested: “Not here, not here”; how he worried, in some buried part of his mind, about the open door, about the sermon he was to preach, about his life, about Deborah; how the tape got in their way, how his collar, until her fingers loosened it, threatened to choke him; how they found themselves on the floor at last, sweating and groaning and locked together; locked away from all others, all heavenly or human help. Only they could help each other.  They were alone in the world.

"My name is Kathy H.": Two blackboards on Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go"

The blackboards from my class's discussion on 29 April of a passage from Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. This passage, to be precise, which is the first paragraph of the novel: 

My name is Kathy H. I'm thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year. That'll make it almost exactly twelve years. Now I know my being a carer so long isn't necessarily because they think I'm fantastic at what I do. There are some really good carers who've been told to stop after just two or three years. And I can think of one carer at least who went on for all of fourteen years despite being a complete waste of space. So I'm not trying to boast. But then I do know for a fact they've been pleased with my work, and by and large, I have too. My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. Their recovery times have been impressive, and hardly any of them have been classified as "agitated," even before fourth donation. Okay, maybe I am boasting now. But it means a lot to me, being able to do my work well, especially that bit about my donors staying "calm." I've developed a kind of instinct around donors. I know when to hang around and comfort them, when to leave them to themselves; when to listen to everything they have to say, and when just to shrug and tell them to snap out of it.  

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A blackboard of stills from the James Ivory film of Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day"

The blackboard from my class's discussion on 15 April of a set of stills from James Ivory's 1993 film of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.

"That's true what Harry says": A blackboard on Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day"

The blackboard from my class's discussion on 8 April of two passages from Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. These passages, to be precise:

              "That's true what Harry says. You can tell a true gentleman from a false one that's just dressed in finery. Take yourself, sir. It's not just the cut of your clothes, nor is it even the fine way you've got of speaking. There's something else that marks you out as a gentleman. Hard to put your finger on it, but it's plain for all to see that's got eyes."

*

 

              I was naturally a little surprised by this, but then quickly saw the situation for what it was; that is to say, it was clearly expected that I be baffled by the question. Indeed, in the moment or so that it took for me to perceive this and compose a suitable response, I may even have given the outward impression of struggling with the question, for I saw all the gentlemen in the room exchange mirthful smiles.

"It has never, of course, been my privilege": A blackboard on Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day"

The blackboard from my class's discussion on 1 April of a passage from Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. This passage, to be precise:

It has never, of course, been my privilege to have seen such things at first hand, but I will nevertheless hazard this with some confidence: the English landscape at its finest – such as I saw it this morning – possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more superficially dramatic, inevitably fail to possess. It is, I believe, a quality that will mark out the English landscape to any objective observer as the most deeply satisfying in the world, and this quality is probably best summed up by the term ‘greatness’. For it is true, when I stood on that high ledge this morning and viewed the land before me, I distinctly felt that rare, yet unmistakable feeling – the feeling that one is in the presence of greatness. We call this land of ours Great Britain, and there may be those who believe this a somewhat immodest practice. Yet I would venture that the landscape of our country alone would justify the use of this lofty adjective.

"Mrs Kawakami was quiet": A blackboard on Kazuo Ishiguro's "An Artist of the Floating World"

The blackboard from my class's discussion on 18 March of a passage from Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World. This passage, to be precise:

            Mrs Kawakami was quiet for a moment, as though listening for something amidst the sounds the workmen were making outside. Then a smile spread over her face and she said: 'This was such a splendid district once. You remember, Sensei?'

            I returned her smile, but did not say anything. Of course, the old district had been fine. We had all enjoyed ourselves and the spirit that had pervaded the bantering and those arguments had never been less than sincere. But then perhaps that same spirit had not always been for the best. Like many things now, it is perhaps as well that that little world has passed away and will not be returning. I was tempted to say as much to Mrs Kawakami that evening, but decided it would be tactless to do so. For clearly, the old district was dear to her heart – much of her life and energy had been invested in it – and one can surely understand her reluctance to accept it has gone for ever. (126-127)

"Being at Takeda's": A blackboard on Kazuo Ishiguro's "An Artist of the Floating World"

The blackboard from my class's discussion on 4 March of a passage from Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World. This passage, to be precise:

            'Being at Takeda's', I told them, 'taught me an important lesson early in my life. That while it was right to look up to teachers, it was always important to question their authority. The Takeda experience taught me never to follow the crowd blindly, but to consider carefully the direction in which I was being pushed. And if there's one thing I've tried to encourage you all to do, it's been to rise above the sway of things. To rise above the undesirable and decadent influences that have swamped us and have done so much to weaken the fibre of our nation these past ten, fifteen years.' No doubt I was a little drunk and sounded rather grandiose, but that was the way those sessions around that corner table went. (73)