Speculative Poetry - Einzelansicht

Over the course of the seminar, students will write a learning journal consisting of reading responses and reflections on class discussions (3 credits). To gain 6 credits, students will additionally submit a term paper.
Regular attendance and active participation are vital to creating a fruitful learning atmosphere. So, please sign up for this class only if you intend to actually come to our sessions.

Speculative poetry explores dark possibilities and ponders frightening actualities through condensed, impactful language. In this course, we will sample how contemporary instances of this kind of poetry refract traditional lyric subject-matters like love, beauty, and nature through feminist and ecological lenses. Further, we will analyze how speculative poetry imagines violence and its victims, the price of progress, the terrors of the self, and the apocalypse. Poets include Elsa M. Carruthers, Mary A. Turzillo, Christina Sng, Donna Lynch, Thomas Ligotti, Gemma Files, Lindsay King-Miller, Jennifer Shneiderman, and David Yates. We will round out our discussions by interpreting song lyrics by controversial death metal band, Cannibal Corpse.

Content Advice: The readings of this course feature sexual and misogynist violence, racist murder, self-harm and suicide, and excessive brutality; further, you may find that the condensed nature of lyric poetry serves to bring out these contents more drastically than prose might. Please join the course only if you feel capable of reading and discussing those and similarly disturbing themes.

Texts will be provided via Moodle.