Have you ever thought of poetry as a form of rebellion? Or known what it’s like for your national poets to be seen as resistance fighters, fighting with their voices and guitars as powerful weapons? The module will change the way you think about the role of poetry as a means of social and cultural change and resistance! It will be divided into two main parts: one on Castilian Medieval, Early Modern and Golden Age poetry and another one on contemporary poetry and performance poetry of Spain. The module will begin with an examination of medieval and early modern Spanish folk ballads on topics ranging from Christian-Muslim encounter to forbidden sexuality. It will then trace the evolution of Spanish poetry in the Golden Age, exploring the ways in which the love lyric as well as religious verse were developed in the early modern period as means of expressing the poet’s intellectual prowess, spirituality and subversive view. The module will then explore the poetry written in Spain during the last 40 years. The Novísimos’ poetry, and that of the ‘poetas drogados’ of the 70s, will shed light on the Transition to democracy in Spain, to then move on to the boom of poetry written by women in the 80s and feminism in poetry. The module will move on the ‘poetry of experience’ in the 90s, which dominated and monopolized the poetic field in Spain for more than a decade, to finally examine the turn of the new millennium and the emergence of new forms of performance poetry, such as multimedia poetry recitals, poetry slams and poetry jam sessions in Madrid. The module will consider how the popularity of these events is shifting cultural paradigms and forcing a re-location of prestige, centred on the democratization of poetry.