The Melbourne Literature Seminars

“I’m Nobody! Who are You?”: the Poetry of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson remains one of America’s best-loved poets.  And for good reason.  Her deceptively simple and accessible poems reveal a mind of extraordinary acuity, and a wit biting and playful by turns.  In one sharply focused lyric after another, she explores a panoramic expanse of human experience, its joys and terrors, its follies and exaltations.  In this course we will read and discuss a representative sampling of her poems.

Six two-hours sessions, Fridays beginning 2 May, 2-4

Course fee $130, reader provided at no extra cost

“That then I scorn to change my state with kings”: Shakespeare’s Sonnets 

Shakespeare’s are the first (and usually only) sonnets people think of when the word “sonnet” is mentioned.  He virtually owns the genre in his period, though he composed his sequence as the fashion for sonnet-sequences was waning.  His achievement, however, is indeed formidable.  His sonnets are both deeply felt responses to personal experience and formal exercises in the genre’s distinctive music of language.  We will consider a selection of Shakespeare’s sonnets as both free-standing poetic constructions and a products of their time.

Six two-hours sessions, Wednesdays beginning 28 May, 1-3

Course fee $130, reader provided at no extra cost

A Brief History of the English Language

In this course we will look at some of the more revealing (and entertaining!) aspects of the growth and development of English from the language of some obscure Germanic tribes on the fringes of the Roman empire to its present-day status as a language of global commerce and communication.  Oh, did I mention literature?  Plenty of everything in as user-friendly a package as I can manage.

Six two-hours sessions, Thursdays beginning 17 April, 1-3

Course fee $130, reader provided at no extra cost

I’ve had requests that The Melbourne Literature Seminars offer one-hour midday sessions in Ross House, either 12-1 or 1-2, that would allow people who work in or around the CBD to spend their lunch-hours discussing poetry.  I’d love to give it a go if enough people are interested, so please get back to me if you are, so I can start thinking about possibilities.  If anyone has any suggestions about particular poets or poems that might suit such a format, I’d be keen to hear them.

In 2000, Nobel-Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney published one of the most powerful translations of the poetic masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon England, Beowulf.  It is, in my experience, the translation that gives readers unfamiliar with the poem’s very old form of English (ca 850-950 CE) an experience miraculously close to reading the poem in its original language.  The poem itself is an astonishing performance, so don’t miss this opportunity to witness two master poets joining hands across more than a thousand years.  I hope to run a six-week course devoted exclusively to Heaney’s translation, which will take in as well the historical, cultural, theological and literary dimension of the Beowulf-poet’s early medieval moment.  Expressions of interest can be registered (without commitment at this stage) via the “Conact Us” link on the homepage