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In this assignment, you will take
inspiration from Heaney’s speech and
compose your own “Crediting Poetry”
speech. You will imagine yourself
delivering a speech after winning a prestigious award related poetry—with you being the winning
poet or scholar of poetry. Using an engaging, more conversational tone made possible by the form
of the speech, you will synthesize a stance on poetry; not a series of stances, but a coherent and
cohesive stance. You will compose a speech that answers for you the following question in vivid
fashion—what does and can poetry do? What credit do we/can we owe poetry and why? While a
definitive answer is not possible, your speech will offer one robust proposition.
To make your argument, you will bring together your ideas alongside quotations from poetry and
essays in our course materials, considering their striking images and arguments. You will pair these
quotations from our course materials alongside other artefacts and anecdotes of inspiration that are
important to you, which may include references from literature, history, and culture. Feel free to
think BIG and to lean into ideals close to your heart, work, and community—meaning that you may
discuss histories, politics, anecdotes, social and cultural concerns that extend beyond our course
contexts, even as you lean into references from our readings. Bring the subjects, concerns, or
celebrations of the poets we have read in our class into conversation with the subjects, concerns, or
celebrations that matter to you and that you see as distinguishing a vital relationship between poetry
and people.
In this sense your speech will take this quote from James Joyce as relevant: “In the particular is
contained the universal.” Joyce connected this line to a statement of fact—the fact that all of his
works are set in Dublin. But this location, he argued, was not limited in its capacity to relate to
places elsewhere. As he concluded, “For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to
the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world.” Although paradoxical,
Joyce’s claim and his creative writings demonstrate that particularity is the very anchor of
something akin to authentic representation of a community and, at the same time, universality (a
dangerous and perhaps troubling word, but balanced by his commitment to particularity). Since his
death, the reception of his work around the globe has only proved his audacious claim.
Your speech will use modern poetry as an inspiration for thinking about how poetry connects to the
hearts of cities, peoples, and/or communities more broadly. Your speech’s precise concerns will pair
with your precise arguments to shape an expansive message.
Figure 1: December 10, 1995, Stockholm, Image Credit
While Heaney’s speech was over 6,000 words, yours will be 2500+ words. Your speech must
include:
• A creative title
• Quotations from the works of at least 5 poets in our course readings
• Quotations from at least 1 of our poetics essays (e.g. from Whitman, Eliot, Pound, Lowell,
Yeats, Owen, Auden, Hughes, Baraka, Bennet, Ramanujan, Heaney)
• Quotations from at least 2 peer-reviewed scholarly sources. These sources must address the
subject of poetry and/or our assigned class poems/poets
• Literary, historical, or other cultural anchors of your choice
• Ensure you include instances that both interpret (close-read) the poetic fragments you quote
and apply them beyond the scope of their immediate context; how do they bolster your
proposition about poetry?
• Conclude your speech with a works cited list in MLA format
• Double space, use Times New Romans, 12 point font, include your name at the top