Page 9 - Keble Review 2014

wish to attend, and will focus primarily on American poetry of the twentieth century. They will pursue a wide range of ideas and issues, but recurring questions will include: What sort of thinking can
a poet entertain in prose that they may not be able to entertain in quite the same way when writing poetry? How might acts of criticism by creative writers also become forms of self-exploration and self-invention? And can psychoanalytical perspectives be instructively brought to bear on the intimacies, allegiances, and antagonisms that are in play when one writer encounters another writer’s work? The initiative is being funded and led by Keble, with support from The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.
These recent and upcoming events are complemented by developments in research and teaching. All four English tutors are currently engaged in research on poetry - from online databases of writings by Henryson and Marvell, to studies of Romantic poetics, to work on the modern lyric - and six out of eight finalists in English next year have chosen to work on poetry for their dissertations.
In The Orchards of Syon, Geoffrey Hill confessed: ‘I write / to astonish myself’. The same might be said of readers. Students and teachers at Keble continue to be astonished by what can happen in and through poems, and we hope that the study of poetry here will continue to thrive.
More information about The Salutation & Cat:
www.keble.ox.ac.uk/salutation-cat- reading-group
More information about English at Keble:
www.keble.ox.ac.uk/admissions/ undergraduate/subjects/english
More details about ‘The Poet’s Essay’:
www.keble.ox.ac.uk/the-poets-essay
Dr Erica McAlpine
Robin Geffen Career Development Fellow in English
Dr Matthew Bevis
Fellow and Tutor in English
Illustration from John Keble’s The Christian Year, published by Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co. of London, Paris and New York, 1827
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