The Rural Life in Poetry

93 TUTOR: John Byrom

It is easy to associate the countryside with grand landscapes, the seaside or thatched cottages in neat gardens, but rural life is not all centred on the village green. During this course, you will attempt to appreciate the countryside in good and bad times through the ages and look at how it affected poets - and how rural life was affected by poets themselves. From Sir Walter Scott's huge Abbotsford mansion to Seamus Heaney's potato plot, poets have looked at the countryside with very varied insights. Come and share some of them.

Course Notes

You will be most welcome to this course which looks at rural life through the eyes of the poets. Lyric, pastoral, dramatic: in times of plenty and in times of plague: in areas of fertility and areas of famine. Some poems will be well known, others not. Poetry about Wiltshire will also be featured. Essential to this course will be "The Faber Book of Landscape” ed. Kenneth Baker. ISBN 0-571-20071-0. When I looked online at abe books there were plenty of second-hand copies available, so please bring a copy. I hope that a week with the rural poets will be both enlightening and entertaining. I look forward to seeing you.

Course Tutor

John Byrom

About John

John Byrom is now retired but taught in a number of institutions in his career. One of them was Marlborough College where he was a housemaster and Head of the English Department for a time. He left Marlborough for the colder climes of Aberdeen University and then Norway, returning to Scotland to teach in Aberdeen and Perthshire, where he now lives in the shadow of the Highlands. At present he spends a lot of his time reading Scandinavian language with his cats on his knees and looking out at the weather. There is a lot of it.

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Summer School Dates for 2024

All courses run for 5 days

WK 1 8 Jul - 12 Jul

WK 2 15 Jul - 19 Jul

WK 3 22 Jul - 26 Jul

WK 4 29 Jul - 2 Aug

Morning Courses

9.15AM to 12.15PM

Afternoon Courses

1.45PM to 4.30PM

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9.15AM to 4.30PM