Address: 288 Queens Park Road,
Brighton.
East Sussex
BN2 9ZL.
 Telephone: 07791 099423
01273 239875
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 E-mail: symanuk@yahoo.com
My primary motivation in applying for this course with Brighton University is to further my poetic abilities. I realise that in order to progress as a writer; I need to apply a structure of some kind to the production process, and I believe I can improve the quality of my work, and hopefully increase the quantity of the output by participating in a tutored course. I am open to any suggestions of how I could schedule study whilst continuing full time work.
My first degree was in American Studies (Middlesex University 1991 – 1994), including a semester in New York State. My thesis was entitled ‘e e cummings and the mistrust of authority’; and this is the point where my interest in poetry seriously started to take shape.
Since graduating I have explored the subjects and techniques used in poetry, with a view to producing pieces that might be read / heard in my signature style or ‘voice’. I have been influenced in this regard by (most recently) Ezra Pound’s ‘ABC of reading’, ‘The Ghost of
Tradition – Expansive Poetry and Postmodernism’ by Kevin Walzer, and through discussion with the Brighton Nightwriters group, with whom I have been published (within the ‘Shorelines
2010’ anthology).
My writing is centered around wordplay, in a variety of ways. Firstly, as a ‘morphing’ tool, in order to create new meanings out of the joining of words, as in this extract from the poem ‘In the begging inn’;
‘ As round and round and round they go
Where they’ve gone nobody gives an escapology
Or even act-knowledges knocking you over or bumping
You off
Oh see you then
No never mind
No mind never
Not at all
Fall down with out a safety net or sign of a trap ease’
I am keen to explore this and concentrate it as a poetic device. Secondly, I am interested in existing & historic poetic forms and devices, e.g. concrete etc, which I have also explored to a degree, (see the untitled poem on the following page):

GOD
child
CHOOSES
SADNESS
This area interests me as I feel modern media allows the potential for a new dimension of concrete poetry, using image and possibly animation to further stimulate the reader’s experience of the tradition.
I am interested in a better understanding of cadence and rhythm within poetry and what current attitudes to these poetic topics are within both the academic and publishing worlds,. I have explored this idea in more traditional free verse (see extract from ‘Organism’ below):
‘in a jaundiced bed of win what drugs how with obsessions of have monochrome the rainbows as indifferent whether takes a turn for the now’
In terms of publishing, I am interested in spending time learning the various avenues available
(self publishing, co-op, commercially etc), and ways to avoid any pitfalls that may exist along

the way. Please contact me to advise whether you feel I can benefit from studying with you in any way.