'The savage blood’s obscenity,
The rags of my anatomy.' - Theodore Roethke.
 
Philip Sidney used a fashionable anatomical metaphor to describe creating poetry, noting that it was akin to 'parts, kinds, or species' and 'severed dissections fully commendable’. This eight week course will find us examining poetry as if on the anatomy table as a poetry of the body poetic; 'body language'; a poetry of parts. Through a dissective approach, we will examine the history of human anatomy and poetry from writers such as William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson and Robert Burton. The body splayed and the body sexed, the post-mortem body and the punished body will all be encountered, in this anatomy of poetry.
 
This is a three week online course. When you choose to buy this course, we will contact you after purchase to arrange a time to begin which suits you. You can choose between annotated responses to your poems sent to you via email, or live discussion via google hangouts (a gmail email is free and easy to sign up for).