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Introducing Week Three’s materials

Dr Alexandra Kingston-Reese introduces the material for week three of our course, 'How to Read a Poem'.
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Hello everyone! This week we’re diving into intertextuality. Poetic intertextuality emerges in many guises–from poets talking to each other’s work, and poems referencing or writing back to other poems, to poets writing across languages, and poems responding to other art forms. We’ll think closely about the way that translation impacts how we read poetry, and you’ll see me again when we consider specific kinds of intertextuality like ekphrasis.
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Reading poetry can sometimes involve being a detective–being alert to things that sound familiar, that chime with other things we have read or have seen, tracking down what those connections might be, and thinking about what happens to a poem that includes a line from a literary work from another culture or another time, or a line from a protest song, or that references a work of art.

In this video, Dr Alexandra Kingston-Reese introduces the material we will cover this week. We will be focussing on intertextuality: the relationships between poems, and how poets and poems speak to and draw upon one another.

What are you looking forward to learning more about this week? Let us know in the comments below.

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Poetry: How to Read a Poem

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