ABSTRACT
This chapter is an examination of the possibility of conveying key truths about the art of poetry in the very first sessions of undergraduate teaching. Simple but fundamental exercises on sound and structure are outlined and justified to illustrate a poetic aesthetic that resists the contemporary clamour for instant performance, publication and dissemination. The concept of a journey ‘into silence’ is proposed as a means of clearing a space for poetry that a student can enter freely and with facility (the exercises are not complex and require no prior understanding of poetic structure) and then move out of toward their own poem. The resulting poem might be brief, lyrical and it might even be ‘light’ and apparently modest in ambition. What matters is that it (the ‘made’ object) arises out of the beginnings of an understanding of poetry as an art form in itself – and an encouragement to the student to deepen their engagement with the mystery of a means of expression that has a ‘weird tyranny and ungovernable need to exist’ (Stevenson 2000). This demonstrates what practical engagement with silence in a teaching environment reveals about poetry as an art.
