| Fiction & Poetry | Structure of Programme |Methods of Assessment | Courses | Teaching |
| Entry Requirements | Programme Director | AHRC funding | Exam submissions

FICTION AND POETRY

The main purpose of the programme is to encourage students to develop and reflect on their work as writers in the context of contemporary and well-established literatures. The programme will stretch imaginations, encourage the development of technical skills, sharpen the focus of self-criticism, extend the language of analysis, and deepen individual practice.The emphasis in both the fiction and the poetry groups will be on the students' own writing: how to make the most of personal experience, how to go beyond the merely personal, how to write with an appropriate sense of society, how to combine discipline with diversity. The programme will concentrate on the nuts and bolts of pacing, shaping, animating, revising and editing, and will place all these things in a context of appropriate reading. It will also look at the routes to and opportunities for publication.The programme is designed for students who are seriously dedicated to their writing and want to see it in print. It will encourage students to experiment, and to discover new things about themselves, rather than merely consolidate existing strengths. The intention is to make students more ambitious and more perceptive about their own work, to broaden their appreciation of traditional and contemporary work, and to extend their powers of communication.

STRUCTURE OF PROGRAMME

The programme lasts for one year (fifty weeks), beginning in September, or two years (one hundred and two weeks) for part-time students. It consists of three terms. In the Autumn and Spring terms, fiction students and poetry students will both meet for one three-hour workshop each week; at each of these workshops, three students will present work which has been distributed ahead of time and discuss it with the group. Students will also be encouraged to make regular appointments with the course teacher for individual discussions. No workshops will be held in the Summer term, but students will be expected to have regular individual meetings with the teacher. In addition to the weekly workshop in the Autumn term students will take EN5114 Supplementary Discourse [half unit] and then will choose between EN5115 Editing and EN5116 Reading as a Writer. During the summer term we have a programme of visiting speakers from the publishing industry, including writers, agents and editors.

METHODS OF ASSESSMENT

There are three stages of assessment for both fiction writers and poets. At the beginning of the Spring term, prose writers will submit a 5000-word piece of work and poets a portfolio of twelve pages, which will represent the work they have done during the previous Autumn term. It will be given a provisional mark and returned to them and will be resubmitted with a second piece at the beginning of the Summer term. These pieces will then be double marked. Part-time students may submit their work at the end of the Spring and Summer terms in their first year. At the end of the course, prose students will submit a 15,000 word piece of work and poets a portfolio of twenty-four pages; these submissions will again be double marked. In addition, all students will write a dissertation of 12-15,000 words [excluding bibliography and appendix] reflecting on this large-scale piece of work, to be submitted with their portfolio. Part-time students will make these final submissions at the end of their second year.

DETAILS OF SUPPLEMENTARY COURSES

TEACHING

There are two fiction groups and one poetry group; all three members of teaching staff are involved, and all students will have contact with all three members of staff. Teaching is by weekly three-hour workshops during the Autumn and Spring term, running from 2.00-5.00 p.m. on Mondays. One-to-one meetings with the course teacher will also be arranged during these terms. In the Summer term, teaching will be done on a one-to-one basis. Teaching for the half-unit courses will be timetabled in consultation between the students and tutors. Teaching takes place in Central London at 11 Bedford Square and 2 Gower Street. See map.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS

The entry requirement for the course is normally at least an Upper Second in Single Honours English or Combined Honours English, but applicants with degrees in other subjects or with relevant publications will also be considered and are encouraged to apply. Applicants will need to display some ability in the area of creative writing.Applicants for the prose course will be required to complete the application form and to provide a 5000-word sample of their work; those applying for the poetry course are also required to complete the application form and to provide at least twenty-five pages of their work. All applicants are also required to submit an example of their critical work [reviews will be accepted], up to 5,000 words in length. Applicants who get through to the second stage of consideration will normally be interviewed. An equivalent level of achievement is looked for in applications from overseas students.Non-standard applicants will be considered on their merits.

PROGRAMME DIRECTOR AND TEACHERS

Professor Andrew Motion is the author of several collections of poetry, the most recent being Public Property (Faber, 2002). He has also written biographies - including Philip Larkin (Faber, 1993) and Keats (1997) - and a novel, The Invention of Dr Cake (Faber, 2003). His work has been awarded the Somerset Maugham Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Biography. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1999. He moved to Royal Holloway in 2003, after running the Creative Writing MA course at the University of East Anglia for eight years.

Jo Shapcott is highly regarded as a poet. Her first collection, Electroplating the Baby (Bloodaxe, 1988) was awarded a Commonwealth Prize and her second collection, Phrase Book (OUP, 1992) became a Poetry Book Society Choice. In addition, her book, My Life Asleep (OUP, 1998), was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and gained acclaim through winning the Forward Prize for best collection. She has also won the National Poetry Competition twice. Together with Matthew Sweeney she edited an anthology of contemporary poetry in English, but gathered from around the world, entitled Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (1996). Tender Taxes, her collection of conversations with Rainer Maria Rilke's poems in French, was published in 2002.

Susanna Jones is the author of three novels, The Earthquake Bird (2001), Water Lily (2003) and The Missing Person's Guide to Love (2007). She has also published short stories and book reviews. Her writing has been translated into twenty languages and won four awards: The CWA John Creasey Dagger (2001), John Llewellyn Rhys Award (2001), Betty Trask Award (2002), Book of the Year (for the Hungarian translation, 2004).

FURTHER INFORMATION

For application forms write to: English Department, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX or email Karen.kingsley@rhul.ac.uk. For further information please contact Professor Andrew Motion c/o English Department (email:andrew.motion@rhul.ac.uk)

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LEGAL DISCLAIMER

The information on this web site is accurate at the time of being up-loaded, but tutors may be changed and/or courses may be withdrawn in the light of tutor availability and student numbers. While, therefore, the English Department makes every effort to run all listed courses, it cannot guarantee the availability of every course throughout the duration of each student's time on the MA course.