Personal Blogs

So, having made it through another week without a blog post (oops), I've reached the end of Unit 2 in the book format! The next step is entirely online, which will be an interesting change.

I'd forgotten how much fun study of literature is! Unit 2 has definitely been more enjoyable to me than Unit 1. Familiarising myself with the different terms relating to poetry has been easy, and I have really enjoyed the poems that I've read. I know most of them already, but I've only studied a few and it's such fun to delve further into them. Like with classical music, I find that poetry (well, good poetry at least) improves vastly with reading and rereading. The recordings were also really helpful in getting to grips with the poetry, particularly the dialect ones, and the ones that have a strong metre. (As well as 'Beasley Street' by John Cooper Clarke, which is a song, and I believe we will be studying in more detail in the online part of this module.)

I have loved studying poetry and not found this module a slog, although I know some other OU students have. I've become quite active in the forums and - I hope - offered some helpful thoughts to other students. I think I come at this module from a very fortunate background, having studied poetry in depth before (though a long time ago), and because I read a lot of poetry. Even with the poems I knew already, it has been genuinely enjoyable to learn more of the context and study them closely. 

With some of the activities I found myself looking at the 'discussion' section at the same time as writing my own answers. Although this isn't the intended way to study it, I still came up with original ideas, so I'm not too worried. As I move forwards, I'm going to try harder to be more confident in my own ideas and therefore not use the 'pre-made' answers as a crutch. 

There were three opportunities for further self-guided study on the poems: Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est', and 'Strange Meeting', and Nichols' 'Where I Hang.' I studied two: 'Strange Meeting' and 'Where I Hang.' I felt more trepidicious going into these, knowing there was no 'discussion' afterward to compare my thoughts to, but I'm glad I did both of these; it showed me I can actually come up with my own ideas, although I did find a brilliant online analysis of 'Strange Meeting' as this poem was more opaque to me (despite knowing it off by heart!). With 'Wherever I Hang', I only used my own ideas and was pleased that I actually had a lot to say. I may have missed some specific points, but I think that I made valid observations. I also wrote a little about John Agard in this section; although the poem I was referring to was not a 'protest poem', it fit very well: Agard and Nichols both have similar ethnic backgrounds. 'Joining the dots', so to speak, was very satisfactory.

The final activity of the non-online part of this section asked us to consider 'Which was the most effective protest poem?' Well, I protest! I don't think this is a possible question to answer, nor do I believe that it is helpful to compare such different poems. The four key poems we studied were so different that to say one was 'better' than another felt meaningless to me. Instead, I used this exercise to write a sort of summary of why each poem was effective in its different ways.

The study diamond was introduced to us at the beginning of this module:

I have to say I didn't consciously use the study diamond when I made my own analyses of the poems, and maybe I should have; however, it felt too formulaic to me. I covered all of these points, but I didn't necessarily label them and say: 'now I am going to talk about techniques...' etc. I'm also unsure why starting with 'effects' is the advised way to go forward; in academic writing, it is usually the techniques that are focused on, as you are not writing from a first-person point of view. I will come back to the study diamond and give it another go. I suppose I felt it was a little patronising - I hope arrogance will not be my downfall! In general, I lack confidence, so that would be a strange anomaly...

At some point before I finish the poetry module, I would like to go back and study 'Dulce et Decorum Est' by Wilfred Owen, and perhaps utilise the study diamond to guide my writing. 

So, onwards and upwards! TMA01 is handed in, and the next section awaits... 

(I wonder whether other OU students are using their blogs. I might ask on the forum.)