Especially for Teachers - Resources

Teaching Poetry

A Forum for Teachers

A forum for teachers hosted by Hugo McCann

This is an edited transcript of the discussion that took place in the English Classroom Forum on the Discover website of the Tasmanian Department of Education. The discussion was hosted by Hugo McCann, well-known and respected as a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania. Hugo is currently working on joint projects with Paul Boam on the ways of relating poetry and painting and on approaches to using visual texts in contemporary schooling.

Participants in the forum included mainly primary and high school teachers, pre-service teachers and academics.

The discussion has been edited to make it easier to follow. We think you will find it absorbing to read in its entirety and a valuable professional learning tool. You can read the discussion on the web or download it as a Word document. (Click here to download the Word document - 332k)

To go straight to the section of the discussion that interests you, simply click on the hyperlinks below.

Introduction
Teaching poetry — great ideas from the classroom
What is poetry?
Why teach poetry?
A National Outcomes Statement for poetry? (incorporating more teaching ideas)
Some closing remarks

Teaching resources and references:

Poetry on poetry
Poetry books and books about poetry — relevant bibliographies
Comments on poetry (from various writers with definite views)
Poetry play - finding forms (a range of poetic forms for classroom use)
A poetry glossary (a reference list of poetic terms)
An Opening Collection of Poems

Introduction

I thought it would be helpful to offer a couple of opening questions which might invite responses (answers, comments, extensions, contradictions, even poems) which, one hopes, will generate an interesting and stimulating sharing of ideas and topics related to poetry in the classroom.

Some starter topics/questions:

Please add your own questions, make a comment, offer some interesting examples of poems, or poets or writers on poetry or offer reasons for teaching poetry.

Teaching Poetry: Great Ideas from the Classroom

Carol Wilson
Hugo, your questions have really made me think about poetry in my different classrooms and contexts. When I reflect on introducing kids to poets I immediately think of Michael Rosen. I love his everyday humour, his poignancy, his relevance, his picture of the world. As a really useful text I have long relied on A World of Poetry selected by Rosen and I enjoy the advice he gives to would be poets in the book There's a Poet Behind You (edited by Morag Styles and Helen Cook).

When beginning a session on poetry, I have often used the following as a starting point: "Read all these poems and choose three: one that you'd like to read aloud, one that you'd choose for a friend and one that you want to copy out and keep".

Andrea Dare
My grade two class last year became avid readers of poetry. This was inspired mainly by some Michael Rosen poetry which was read to them and also provided for them to read themselves and listen to on tape. We also made a video of one poem. This became a huge task involving storyboarding, casting, costume and set design, writing of letters to organise locations for filming and so on. Off on a bit of a tangent from poetry, but it illustrates the rich experiences children can be part of when motivated by a poem or poet they love. For the rest of the year the children just devoured poetry books and the student to student discussions during "quiet" reading were amazing. In short, I will definitely use Michael Rosen again with young children to help them to engage with poetry.

Mark Lewis
As a parent who witnessed the enjoyment and stimulation that my daughter got out of making a video of a Michael Rosen poem I must congratulate Andrea on the great job she did! The parents of the children in Andrea’s class were invited to the video premiere which was superb! I believe that it gave the children a very positive attitude to poetry by incorporating modern technology and by selecting a poet the children could relate to. I believe that it is important to expose young children to poets who write about things that relate to their lives and experiences. Michael Rosen does this in a very entertaining way and his work is enhanced even further when accompanied by illustrations from Quentin Blake. Young children also enjoy the way that poets "play around with words" because this often relates to the way that they themselves are experimenting with language. This is why Dr Seuss continues to appeal to young children. (If I ever have to read Green eggs and Ham again I think I will scream!!) In summing up I would say that if you are introducing poetry to young children you can’t go wrong with Michael Rosen.

Steven Figg
The following are three practical approaches for teaching poetry, particularly in Grades 7 and 8.

Multi-voice speaking: Students enjoy performing poetry in small groups and I believe that multi-voice speaking should be an integral part of our poetry courses. "Hist Whist" by e.e.cummings, ‘Talking After Christmas Blues" by Adrian Henri and "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll always work well. Readers’ Theatre and choral speaking are other effective approaches.

Form writing: Writing poetry using a framework or model is a useful activity. One of my favourites is a three-stage poem. The first stanza begins with the line, "When I was a child"; the second stanza begins with the line "When I am an adult"; and the third stanza begins with the line, "Caught between two worlds." Ask students to write five or six lines for each stanza.

Using Computers: For those with access to computers, try a line break activity. Provide students with short poems written without line breaks and invite them to put the breaks back in. This is a practical way to teach about the effects of rhyme and rhythm. For example :

"My sister had a puffer fish she caught it from the pier an oily slimy puffer fish it lasted for a year and if you took it by surprise or frightened it or swore it puffed till it was twice the size that it had been before."

Peter Mobey
Would you giggle if I suggested the lyrics of The Wiggles as an excellent way to introduce young hearers and readers to the delights of poetry?

I feel that we need to look beyond poetry books if we are to capture young imaginations as we introduce them to poetry. Here we have a contemporary source, easily overlooked, yet with the potential to offer so much.

The Wiggle lyrics readily lend themselves to accompaniment with clapping and/or percussion, imaginative retells, or just sharing for fun. Other lyrics/poems such as ‘Butterflies Flit’ evoke a wonderful sense of movement, while also providing great springboards for visual art activities.

I'd also like to recommend Margaret Mahy's The Tin Can Band & Other Poems. My children (aged between twelve & three) have all delighted in these poems. The edition I have (1989) is beautifully illustrated by Honey de Lacey which further captures their imagination.

Roslyn Teirney
With Year 7 classes, I have often started with a humorous poem, eg "Gloria" by Joyce Armer in Me and You and Poems 2 (Hodder and Stoughton). I find this works well as an ice-breaker. The poem is brief and we can enjoy a good laugh together. At the same time, I can introduce a few terms to the students.

Banjo Paterson is always successful. Some of Paterson’s poems are well known from the students’ younger days. I link them with a Film Study of ‘The Man from Snowy River’ and try to get the kids reciting them.

Philip R Rush went down well in my previous school which was in a rural setting. A few people have probably heard Rush on ABC radio. Poems which appealed to these students were "Dairy Farming in Winter" (very relevant because many of my kids had to milk before they came to school), "Rain", "The Galvanised Water Tank", "The School Cat" and "Death of a Giant."

I like to invite an artistic response to the imagery as often as possible. A lot of kids love drawing and enjoy responding in that mode.

Chris Penfold
Here is an example of a very successful lesson. And to think it was one of the very first lessons I ever put together!-

DADA POETRY

The lesson requires a great big pile of newspapers - preferably all sorts. You’ll need some A3 paper, some scissors and some glue sticks. NOTE: This activity can get very messy!

Anyway...get every student to cut out a whole bunch of headlines from the newspapers. They can look for interesting ones or they can just cut randomly; at this stage of the lesson it doesn't really matter. I prefer them to not really pay attention to the headlines. They don't have to cut out all of the words in the headline and they could even cut out one or two words.

Students put the cut-out headlines and words into a personal pile. They randomly select headlines and stick them onto an A# sheet. Tell them: "DON'T LOOK. keep doing it until you feel like stopping.

NOW.........LOOK!

Ta da!!! You have a POEM!!!

A DADA POEM."

Students gain quite a lot from this - they see meanings where you wouldn't expect them, they see humour, they see how words fit together, they see how out of chaos can come something wonderful! They love this! It is fun and I've never had a problem getting students to read out their poem.

This could be extended to include some critical literacy exercises and is also an excellent way to introduce the concept of poetry and meaning in poems.

I read Bob Dylan's poem, 'Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie', a great, big epic poem about the brilliance of Woody Guthrie........it is long and difficult to read but it is simply perfect for DADA.........kids are just entranced by it!

Charles Morgan
I have found that students’ knowledge of film techniques provides a valuable key into their appreciation of poetry, especially imagery. This approach can also help them talk more openly about the powerful emotional moments in a poem.

1. Hand out a sheet that explains some of the main technical terms used by film makers. Don’t go into too much detail as students will be familiar with most of these terms.
   
2. Tell the students to imagine they have been asked to prepare a script for a video that will be shown during the reading of a poem.
   
3. Hand out copies of a poem — narrative poems and dramatic monologues work really well.
   
4. Read the poem to the students and briefly discuss the meaning.
   
5. In groups of about four, have students prepare their script. If the poem is long, you can allocate particular stanzas to different groups. The students often find the list of technical terms useful here. Techniques such as close-up, panning, tracking, flash back and slow motion will help them explore the characters, events, images and symbols portrayed in the poem.
   
6. Have each group present its script to the class. Discussion will arise about the different techniques used and different interpretations of the poem. This can lead to a discussion of literary language and the introduction of some technical terms.

I see exciting possibilities for extending this approach to incorporate ICTs such as PowerPoint into the English classroom.

Krista Sellars
Anyone who has had the pleasure of seeing Australian performance poet, Steven Herrick during his school performances, will know how his poetry delights audiences.

His book Poetry to the Rescue is a great one for grade 7s. All of Herrick's publications are excellent resources for teachers of Drama as well. I particularly like ‘The Ten Commandments (or ten things your parents will never say) in "Poetry to the Rescue". An activity that works really well is for the students to write their own versions of this poem using other characters such as "My Older Sister", "My Nan", "A Police Officer", My Little Brother" and so on.

Check your library to see if you have any Steven Herrick poetry. He's really fun but has also published some great novels in poetic form for older readers like Love Ghosts and Nose Hair.

His poems are a great example of conversational poetry and go a long way in demonstrating to students that a poem doesn't have to rhyme to be good!

Andrea Dare
I agree. The conversational poem "The Ten Commandments" interested and amused my students. I read the first section about ten things parents would never say and the students wrote ten things their teacher would never say -"You can have 'free choice’ all day" and "let's go to the canteen and help ourselves" featured frequently! The line break activity suggested by Steven Figg was used by my intern who has taken over my class. He commented that most children handled it really well and that it promoted lots of discussion about rhythm and rhyme. It is an activity which I will try when I get back into my room and explore how it affects the way we read the poem aloud and to ourselves.

Joyce Williamson
With regard to poetry for the younger ones, I usually begin with Michael Rosen's "Snapshot of a Moment" which he used at a National Conference in Melbourne some years ago.

Snapshot of a moment.

1. Get the student to focus on the things people say and what he/she actually thinks.

2. Give students a framework when working individually in class

a) Something that is happening
b) Something that I'm thinking
c) Something I say
d) Something that someone says to me
e) Something that I hear
f)  Something that I see

Mum said
"If there's any more trouble from you
You'll get a
CLIP ROUND THE EAR
I'm sick and tired of it
I tell you."
I thought
"OH NO!
Here she goes again.
Why doesn't she pick on Dave?
He's HORRIBLE
He's got spots
He never gets into trouble."
But I don't say anything.

I just go

off

to

my

room.

I like Rosen's view that poetry is a snapshot because I always say to my students that poetry is like art but instead of painting a picture with brushes and paint we use words - a patterning of words. They seem to respond to this. Nothing very earth-shattering here, but with poetry I find that when I start with tried and true methods the students take it from there and they never cease to surprise me!

Norah Morgan
I used to ask the students to draw the images in the poems or, in the case of narrative poems, sounds. The senior students’ drawings were symbolic and depended on colour while the juniors more realistic. The drawings of ..."the highwayman came riding, riding ... were wonderful and when the poems were read aloud their voices echoed the sense.

Carol Wilson
There's a wonderful book called Troy Thompson's Excellent Peotry Book (and yes I can spell poetry!) This is written by Gary Crew and Craig Smith and is full of assignments from Miss Kranke. This is a great way to present students with a range of poetry forms and is probably suitable for years 5-8. The Literature Base, Volume 9, Issue 3, August 1998 has a range of activities to use with this book.

Hugo
Over Easter I happened upon a discussion on ABC Radio National between Clive James and Peter Porter. As internationally successful writers (and poets) they had been asked to reflect upon their early schooling in Australia. Among the matters they both referred to several times was the importance to them as writers of being able to recall poems and poetic passages - passages (even whole works) they had 'by heart'. They thought that it was a mistake to think that consulting printed text was enough - they both had a selection of valued pieces stored in memory and easily retrievable.

It wasn't rote learning they seemed to value but the ability to have favourite 'lengths' of poetry that they could recall without reference to print and that were easily available to them when they as writers needed them. The passages belonged to them in some special way because they were simply 'there' when they wanted/needed them. I was left wondering how far we need 'to carry around with us’ a store of what might be thought of as exemplars of poetic/artistic accomplishment?

Peter Swift
I have always believed that reading lots of poems aloud is important and know that memorisation of poems for performance is a great thing to do. I asked my grade 8s what were some well known poems and they came up with a list of Banjo Paterson’s and some of Lawson’s. One girl said she knew the ‘Geebung Polo Club" and recited it for us all. We are taking up a poetry challenge and the class members have to learn 14 lines of a poem (so a sonnet neatly fits).

Karen Clark
I have to come in there, because I am someone who strongly believes in the importance of giving young people the words to discuss poetry. A real excitement can be generated about poetry and the "meta-language" associated with it. Maybe it's something about "knowing stuff". Maybe it's about opening up new ways of appreciating poetry and poets, but mostly I think it's about encouraging a way of seeing the world.

I think the hardest part of teaching poetry is breaking things down into small enough parts so that all students can engage in the conversation. I watched a skilled teacher once exploring similes with my grade 10 class. She used the model of:

She got the students to come up with any ideas to fill in the spaces. (Before the students wrote, she discussed clichés and overused words.) She collected some of the ideas scribbled on paper and looked at each one separately. With great tact, she responded enthusiastically to each one - even the one about love being like a rose! What sort of rose? Why do we always think of a rose? etc....

Someone wrote " jealousy tastes like rusty nails". I remember this one as being quite powerful, but there were many more. She looked at how much was conveyed by each small group of words. Students chose one that they liked and then extended the idea into four or five lines. They came up with some fantastic poetry, which we published for our school library.

She also shared some of the similes she liked from some of her favourite poems and invited the students to respond to some of them. She asked which ones made them feel or see or hear something?

It made me think about how we, as teachers, need to have a strong working knowledge and understanding of poetic techniques in order to engender any enthusiasm. We also need to keep our focus very clear, show genuine excitement over word choice, have some poems that speak to us, and recognise the skill involved in the writing of poetry.

Mandy Paske
Two texts that English teachers may be interested in are Painting with Words and Double Vision - both by Michael and Peter Benton and published by Hodder and Stoughton. I have taken a couple of extracts from their introductions to give people an idea of what they're about: "Painting with Words is a collection of paired paintings and poems suitable for work with secondary pupils studying English, Art and related subjects. Most of the pairings involve a writer responding to a particular painting by making a poem about it; but there are also examples of painters who have illustrated scenes from plays or poems. Our teaching approaches have two main aims: to indicate a way-in to the particular painting and poem which will engage pupils actively in careful viewing and reading; to encourage focused discussion as well as creative and critical writing Both paintings and poems need time. The approaches we have suggested are varied and dictated by the nature of the particular pairing, but our overall purpose has been to encourage you to dwell on both the pictures and the words."

Andy Kowaluk
This semester I have been taking a Creative Writing Short Course. The focus was on short stories and poetry. The kids were to put together a folio of work over a 12 week period with one double lesson a week. Their work will be published on the Net in our literary journal Wielangta Online. (This will be the first electronic issue). When teaching poetry I focused upon descriptive poetry. My reason was entirely selfish; when reading, this is what I enjoy the most.

I began the mini unit on poetry by talking to the kids about subject matter. The emphasis was upon how the subject of much extremely good poetry was often something as simple as a cloud, a leaf, a seagull or the like. We went outside and spent most of the double lesson looking around the school and deciding upon what might be a suitable subject for a poem. Once they decided on a subject they were asked to sit down in an area at the front of the school and begin to write. We spent the last 10 minutes reading our offerings to the class.

The next lesson was much more formal. I spoke to the kids about subject matter again and introduced the notion that what was different about poetry was they way the poet makes use of language. I read a number of poems (all classics from an old anthology) and asked the kids to, firstly, make decisions about the subject of each and, secondly, to chose words, phrases, lines or stanzas where language was made use of in a particularly striking way. This was to be done in groups with each group reporting back at the end of each reading with their findings. We had an extremely interesting discussion about both aspects of the poems.

The next lesson was taken by a student teacher. Her contribution went across really well. The focus was creativity. Interestingly a number of barriers to reading their own contributions were broken down by some language games and by the tone of the lesson. The kids did some valuable group work and reported back to the class. They also did some creative work of their own.

With the ground work done the kids were encouraged to write descriptive poems of their own. They did this with little or no reluctance. The final products were of variable quality, but some showed real promise and all meant something to the kids who wrote them. These will now be published on our Website.

There are as many ways of teaching poetry as there are teachers of poetry!

Karen Clark
Yesterday I thought about the demands placed upon us as teachers of poetry. As I prepared packed lunches for the family (making sure my husband was ironing or doing something equally domestic!!) I listened to my daughter Elise as she did her homework on reading a poem onto tape.

She chose "Clancy of the Overflow" and read it aloud to me before committing it to tape. She kept stopping and asking the meaning and pronunciation of certain words. Intermittently she had bursts of enthusiasm about the brilliance of the poem and how she wished that one day she could write as well. She asked about why the line breaks were in certain places because it seemed that the breaks weren't always in the spot that there were natural pauses.

As she read it for the sixth or seventh time, she talked about how she could identify with the storyline - especially the bit about people in the city not having time and she talked of how her throat tightened when she read it.

We discussed the emotional impact of poetry and how it becomes memorable - a part of ourselves. We looked at some of the terms used for the things she had mentioned - enjambment, iambic rhythm, images.

Our discussion reminded me of the importance of studying "the canon" and how we might think that some works are "old hat" but that kids come with a fresh perspective.

I also considered the conditions necessary for effective teaching of poetry. Maybe some of the features of successful teaching include:

As English teachers we need to know and understand so much to guide our young people into the world of poetry!

Hugo McCann
Karen, thank you for the way in which you introduce the question of how to share with students the forms of poetry and the language about poetry. I thought this might come up so I put together a short introductory glossary on 'meta-language' about poetry. It is part of the Poetry Glossary prepared for this forum. I incline to the view that such language is best learnt when it is needed to talk about and notice something that we want to talk (or write) about. The trick is to create the need to notice/talk - talk/notice features which mark poems off from our expectations of prose.

I have also included some choral verse (poetry particularly suited for oral presentation) in the Opening Collection . I really like that remark of Seamus Heaney's that 'lobe and larynx' are important to poets and poems (and, of course, poetry whatever we may take it to be. I have just finished reading a novel by Robert McLiam Wilson 'Eureka Street' (The ABC recently put a serial TV version of the novel) and it seems to me that Chapter 10 of the novel (and some of the voice overs used in the TV version) looks like prose on the page but it sounds like the poetry of a celebration of humanity in the midst of a tragic city - Belfast - when one reads it aloud either to someone else or to oneself in the auditorium of one's silent reading mind.

I guess this last reference leads me to think we need to be able to answer the question: "When is a poem?"

What is Poetry?

Andrea Dare
I often have difficulty explaining to younger children what a poem actually is. What separates a poem from other genre? Any suggestions?

Angela Bird
I have just started a poetry module with my pre-tertiary Writers' Workshop class. At the beginning of the lesson, I asked the students to read a range of poems and set up a poetry journal. I then read them a range of definitions of poetry by poets before they started on the first group activity.

We started with the question "What is poetry" and the students worked in groups (non friendship) on large paper noting down what poetry meant to them — "What is a poem?", "What poetry is about?" etc. They then moved around the room reading each others’ responses and I asked them to write questions or comments on the response sheets of the other groups. When they arrived back at their group they had to discuss and answer the questions left by other students. I tried to draw all the ideas together with them. We discussed the idea of images as we read a range of poems. After reading these poems we looked at simile, metaphor and personification using definitions and examples. In groups, the students had to read and find examples (I had a range of books in the classroom) of each which they contributed to a poster on each device.

After that I gave them the exercise from A Book to Write Poems By called "Close Up Poems" and they had to write one using at least one of the devices we'd discussed. I put up the group work on the walls after the lesson. I'm sure many of you have done similar things and what I did with Year 11/12 students could be done with most age groups.

Andrea Dare
My dilemma with the question "What is a poem" was solved by enlarging and displaying several poems, and after reading them several times, asking children what they noticed about the poems. They could then refer to their impressions, the sounds etc. as well as the visual aspects of poetry. I got some really good responses. Now the children know lots of features that SOME poems contain.

Mark Howlett
I think it is far easier to say what is not a poem than it is to say what is a poem. It is a bit like trying to answer the question, 'What is art?’. One way around the problem of trying to define the breadth of poetry could be to break it into its forms and define them. We can attempt to define a ballad, a villanelle, a sonnet....but this is not really useful for your younger children, as it does not answer their question. But then, nor is it really useful for we older children who are struggling to come up with a surefire answer to the question. Maybe the question cannot be answered. Maybe the answer to their question is - a poem is a piece of writing that you call a poem. Or perhaps the answer is - I don't know. The answer I give to myself (and to my students) when I ask myself this question is, "Poetry is a complex, writer-centred genre, so it can't be defined simply or easily. It exists because it has a purpose. And that purpose is to enable us to communicate a part of our existence in the most effective way we can, without worrying about being restricted by unnecessary rules and regulations".

This is not to suggest that there are not rules to follow, but rather that they should not restrict us. In fact, we could and should create our own rules. Then I can concentrate on trying to help them understand what it is they are trying to say and how to help them say it more effectively. That, I think, is the essence of poetry, even if it is not the definition.

Hugo McCann
I think Mark Howlett's comments about the difficulties surrounding definition, especially of poetry, are very helpful.

I recall that I liked to use ostensive definitions when I was working with young children - I guess I thought children acquire a lot of language through pointing though this meant that I needed to have a variety of things (examples) at which I could point if they were to grasp something of how varied poems can be. Anyway, many young minds seem to want to meet particular examples from which they develop interesting generalisation they can share with us.

Here is an example I have used with children in the past. It features language used in formal ways [with rhyme and rhythm features].

I eat my peas with honey

I eat my peas with honey,
I've done it all my life,
It makes the peas taste funny,
But it keeps them on my knife.

Anon

I guess that this example provides opportunities for speaking aloud and thus can enjoyed by the ear and larynx as well as the eye on the page.

Peter Mobey
There is a shared fascination with the boundaries between prose and poetry....

At Art School I came to believe that the final deciding factor in classification was the artist's intention. (eg was a piece of work a print or a digital image?)

Norah Morgan
I recently asked a 7 year-old what she thought free verse was and she said it was poetry that the poet wasn’t paid for. With that definition, most poetry must be free verse! I think it was Robert Frost who said, "Free verse is like playing tennis without a net". I suppose that it may be freedom of restriction from metre, rhythm, rhyme and form. I can enjoy free verse, but sometimes feel it is prose broken up to look like verse and could very well have been written as prose.

Hugo McCann
I sometimes think that Frost might have been wrong and that 'free verse' is verse that finds its own 'rules' and will not be restricted by even the tennis court lines but this leaves the reader and writer with the widely daunting task of finding, or inventing, all the 'rules' as they go.

Perhaps it could be said that "layout does nothing, it is the thought that counts and intellectual reflection is not really poetry". But if you did, why is this passage from T.S.Eliot poetry?:

"Spring is its own season sempiternal though sodden towards sundown, suspended in time, between pole and tropic. When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire, the brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches, in windless cold that is the heart's heat, reflecting in a watery mirror a glare that is blindness in the early afternoon." (Four Quartets -the opening of 'Little Gidding')

When do we introduce a conscious and articulate awareness of rhyme and metre? I have always been intrigued by the apparent paradox that form (controlled say by rhyme, rhythm, metre, number of lines, refrain and the kinds of stanza in use) sometimes, perhaps frequently, frees and energises the imagination while opening new insights into language.

I guess I am inviting you to explain 'when is poetry?'.

Kate Black
I feel that it is the sound which defines what is poetry, rather than the layout.

Hugo McCann
Does your present formulation then mean that poetry's being depends upon the sounding voice (aloud or in the mind/head). There are indeed sequences of the thoughts that sound very memorable and occupy the mind for almost a lifetime. The American poet, Howard Nemerov, writes somewhere about 'figures of thought' and I think that he might mean poetry is marked by its 'figures of thought' which are realised in a particular combination of language. I am intrigued by the boundaries between prose and poetry and so I keep picking over this whole issue. How about this: 'As the cat climbed over the top of the jam closet first the right forefoot carefully then the hind stepped down into the pit of the empty flowerpot.' [Refer to William Carlos Williams’ poem.’]

Peter Mobey

The topics flying in the ether have generated LOTS of discussion in this household. We have gone through the house pulling all the poetry books off the shelves and reading old favourites to each other - and our children. The request from Hugo was for lists or comments about anthologies/authors/individual poems. Maybe our teetering stacks sitting on the floor in the lounge room should respond to this...

Leunig rubs shoulders with Shakespeare, and Keats and the Ahlbergs sit side by side. Which do you prefer? Well it depends on the day and the time and the slant of the moonlight...there is space for all of these at different times.

Does Jeanette Winterson write prose or poetry? - The Passion seems like a novel that is a poem written as prose. How do you define poetry? Who defines poetry? And for whom?

In considering children and poetry we thought about what we read to our own children - the Ahlbergs:

"Each peach pear plum, I spy Tom Thumb,
Tom Thumb in the cupboard, I spy Mother Hubbard,
Mother Hubbard in the cellar, I spy Cinderella" - wonderful stuff, with wonderful illustrations and many a gurgle from the 1 1/2 year old - now 3 1/2 she can just about recite the lot with great enthusiasm and pleasure.

Roald Dahl - love him or hate him - he captures imagination and induces word play and amazing drawings

A B Paterson has already been mentioned by other contributors, as I think has AA Milne (still a hot favourite with our small sample size)

Kipling's "Songs for Youth" have been avidly read by one child - especially

‘The Law of the Jungle’

Edward Lear is sung on ‘Playschool’ - "On the ning nang nong, where the cows go bong, and the monkeys all say boo..." (Hope the quote is correct).

In 'test-reading' to our sample size of 4 (age 13 to 3) we were surprised - but Leunig was rapturously received - and read aloud to each other throughout long car journeys. Is Leunig's work poetry? Maybe some, but not all? Can poems have illustrations as part of their structure? Are some forms of prayer a sub-genre of poetry? (cf the book 'A common prayer')

The other big hit has been a collection of poems written by young people in New Zealand. Don't think this is so much to do with the content of the anthology - but more to do with children of the same age actually IN PRINT, PUBLISHED - and hence the writing of poetry seen as a valued and valuable thing to do.

"When I take Spot out for a walk,
It's sometimes hard to see,
If I'm taking him for a walk,
Or if he's taking me. "

by Annette Ring, age 8 (from "I caught a poem" - editor Helen Hogan). The first anthology in the series was called "My poem is a bubble".

Why are we doing this? Why bother with Poetry?

Hugo McCann
In a world so devoted currently to economic rationalism and vocationalism how does one offer a persuasive response to the question, "Why bother with poetry?" Why take up a whole class's time with it? I guess the question will come in different forms and with different urgency in different settings.

The primary pupil asks it. The secondary student asks it. The colleague who never liked it and has never felt the need to read it asks it. [Or the one who feels they have to try to 'teach poetry' but asks you to do it for them.] The parent who hated 'Shakespeare' at school asks it. The business person who is concerned that the effort be devoted to useful outcomes asks it. The individual who says that poetry was fine - the reading, the saying, the listening, the writing until there was a requirement that one write or talk about it (compare and contrast, note in detail the use of language, show the development of and so on) - asks it.

I wonder what set of answers might occur to you.

Paul Dobber
Further to Hugo’s query along bean-counting lines, I thought I might offer the following, noting that economic metaphor seemed indicated:

1. Poetry is value-added language
2. A great poem is one which, deposited in the bank of memory, can be drawn against throughout life and yield an ongoing interest of insight and awe.

Linley Plester
I am amazed at how much poetry I inadvertently learned by heart through minimal exposure…the appeal and impact must have been tremendous as I find I can recite great chunks after only reading or hearing poems at irregular intervals. So why teach poetry?

Well…there is personal growth. Often a poem will express an emotion or experience a student is grappling with. Or the emotive nature of poetry will "make real" an experience that the student could not have had (or hopefully will not have had). Feeling is such a powerful way of knowing. Students need to confront emotions and to learn the feelings behind actions and events. It is all part of growing into a whole and tolerant person and becoming a tolerant citizen.

Geoff Ellis
Why teach poetry?

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Kirsten
I have just battled my way through an Honours BA in French Lit and History in Canada and if I have one more person ask me why I bothered and didn't do Science (my initial inclination) I think I will scream. But, apparently I am the one with the last laugh. At home (Toronto), we have a government that hates teachers and any form of education that isn't Science or Technology based, even though many members of Cabinet, including the Attorney General, have degrees in philosophy! But, the point...while everybody is clamouring "technology, technology, technology", articles have begun popping up in the major newspapers extolling the virtues of Humanities. In particular, the CEO of one of our biggest banks wrote an article and stated that he would rather hire someone who could read Chaucer and Shakespeare than someone who could crunch numbers because, he said, he could always teach someone to crunch numbers. He reasoned that if you could read this literature and make sense of it, you were analytical, intelligent and creative, among many other things, and he thought that if you were capable of doing something that challenging, you were capable of learning the skills necessary for business and Science.

So there you go. Coming from someone who just finished her degree a couple of weeks ago, it can be very comforting to know not everyone thinks my degree is a waste of paper!

Doug Bruce
Unlike manipulating the exchange rate or cloning sheep, poetry is good for the soul.

Anna Stewart
I find I grab a poetry book when I am looking for a quick read and do this because it is like swimming. You sink into the flow of the words and wallow in the satisfaction of knowing that whatever the intended meaning, your own meaning is the one that is right for the moment. You come out of the experience feeling fresh and smug that you have had the opportunity to dip, and are rewarded into the bargain!

Karina Churchill
I went to a short workshop given by John Marsden at a recent TATE conference. Apart from John's personal anecdotes and own love of language, I was struck very profoundly by a comment he made about the questions students asked about why they had to 'do' certain topics such as creative writing and poetry because they found it very difficult to be creative or to 'think up stuff'. John's reply was that these topic areas allowed the students to manipulate language and its rules to express their thoughts, feelings, emotions and understandings in words and phrases, lines or sentences, paragraphs or stanzas that reflected something magical about being empowered to use language for our own purposes. One particular example he gave was of hearing a child say to its mother, "Mummy, I have lemonade legs", meaning that the child could feel the sensations given by pins and needles. This can also be applied to studying poetry written by people other than ourselves.

"Why study it?" you ask. It would be amiss of us not to teach poetry and in doing so deny our students the possibility of having those experiences where suddenly language comes alive. How many of us can recall a moment when, suddenly, a world of meaning dawned on us through hearing a poem or piece of prose read to us and then discussed? At its very best, poetry can draw from within us both an emotional and an intellectual response. Surely success in our own writing comes in part from the reading and sharing of the writing of others?

Melissa Bernacki
All of us have been creating poetry since we were little, before we knew what poetry was. Remember the words you chanted with friends or to yourself when playing? Remember the nursery rhymes you heard at home? Do you remember deliberately changing some of the words in the rhymes to make them silly or funny? You were enjoying the sounds of words and experimenting with word usage. I believe that poetry in the classroom is a great opportunity for students to express themselves. I view writing poetry as a means for the quieter/less confident students to communicate opinions. I find poetry also connects us to our emotions and we can learn more about ourselves. It connects us with our compassion, wonder, empathy and appreciation. It can also disturb us, shaking us out of our comfort zone.

Doug Bruce

In haste:

1. We need stuff that lifts us out of the humdrum of everyday life.

2. We need stuff that helps us to interpret, understand and

appreciate the extraordinary and the ordinary events in our lives. In some ways, poetry is experience distilled. It can be bad rotgut or the finest Scotch. It can appear in the middle of a novel or the back bar of a one-horse town. I'm mucking around with poetry with my grade sevens at the moment and one of the things we have done is look at Cowboy Poetry on the Net. They are rapt (not necessarily in everything we're doing) to be exploring something so quirky. The point is that it gives us a concentrated perspective on all aspects of the human condition. The exchange rate and cloning sheep are of course part of the human condition and poetry is a way that we can explore how these things impact on the human condition. Maybe we should start an on-line poem about "The Dive of the Aussie Dollar"?

A National Outcomes Statement for Poetry in Schools???

Hugo McCann
We are reaching the end of this forum on poetry and I am cramming in last thoughts and ideas which I hope will provide further thought and stimulus into the rest of the year.

If you were forced to,
if a gun were put to your head,
if you were threatened with extra yard duty on an tap freezing frosty morning,
if you were promised that a response would help you lose weight without effort,
if you were promised and given all the answers to a ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ sequence,

what might you be able to write as ‘outcomes for a national poetry program’ and ‘could you distinguish between a grade 1 and a Grade 12 performance, or better still, between a Grade 5 and a Grade 8 performance????

Some starters for anyone interested in joining in the ‘game’ - they all obviously need rewriting or removing with appropriate substitution inserted in their stead. Don’t take them too seriously:

and much, much more (what is a marketing cliché among friends?)- which I hope you will add…[Grade?]

Some Closing Comments

We have reached the ‘forum’s’ ending - it's going to stop or pause perhaps. It is, after all, the term's end. Has it reached the forum’s end/goal - to make poetry/verse something worth focusing on and trying to tease out a little what might be chosen to read and write? I hope it has. Anyway there's a lifetime's poetry out there.

The American educator, Alan Purves reports the comments of a student who said,' I used to like poetry until the eighth grade, when I found that it was full of hidden meanings that only the teacher knew.' Does that ring a bell with anyone? How might we ease the student reader beyond that difficulty and into a continuing liking of poetry in all its forms?

In the September edition of the English literary journal Signal in 1979, Griselda Greaves wrote," Poetry is the crystalisation of a concept so that every facet of that concept can be seen. It can be grasped., only partially, at one concentrated reading. Its true appreciation transcends mundane explanation. It is an emotional experience as much as an intellectual one but both are there."

The English poet who has written some charming poems for the young, Charles Causley (Penguin published some of his work in a volume entitled Figgie Hobbin) wrote: 'A poem is not an object, fixed in space and time, with a single, immovable 'meaning. It is a living organism which we can study, match with our experience, and of which we may make something new every day. Properly examined, a good poem, however simply-seeming it may appear on the surface, never stops giving up fresh and exciting secrets.'

The former poet laureate, C.Day-Lewis, wrote "Some poetry lovers would be shocked if we told them that they do not really love poetry at all: what they love is the prose meaning they can extract from a poem - the truly poetic response is one of pure pleasure."

I am not sure that we explored a wide enough range of student activities which would ensure poetic expression and appreciation as an exciting part of school programs. We didn't examine in sufficient detail ways in which poetry and verse while being part of the language program (including reading aloud and spelling) can find places in SOSE, Music, Art, Drama and also be part of the ways in which we form school and classroom communities.

Those are all matters for other times and occasions. And, of course, there are many more matters where those came from.

If one of the ends of the forum was to talk up the pleasures and the place of poetry in the conversations of humankind, it looks as if that is what happened for all sorts people. GREAT! Would that it could have been more.

Poetry Websites

1. Cyberpoets
Hosted by State Library of Victoria. The site contains a database of poetry, links to poets’ websites, writers’ resources and an e-zine.

2. Divan
An on-line poetry journal produced by students and teachers from Box Hill Institute, Melbourne.

3. ISLMC Poetry for Children
Poetry for children has been developed by the Internet School Library Media Center at James Madison University. It contains many forms of poetry including nursery rhymes and Mother Goose sites, songs, haiku, ways to write poetry and poetry in the classroom.

4. Listen and Write: Poetry
From BBC Education, this site contains poetry writing activities, audio poems, rhyming raps, simile poems, a thesaurus and a gallery of children’s work where children can send their finished work. Suitable for students between the ages of 9 and 11.

5. Haiku for People!
Haiku for people is edited by Kei Grieg Toyomasu. It describes what the haiku is and how to write haiku poems. There are links to haiku pages and examples of haikus organised by themes such as: food, summer, flowers, computers and Christmas.

6. Poetryetc
A poetry discussion group maintained by the Australian poet John Kinsella who is based in Cambridge, England. The site provides for dialogue related to poetry and poetics.

7. Jacket Magazine
A free internet magazine which presents reviews of new poetry, interviews and literary articles. The magazine is edited by the Australian poet, John Tranter and examines changes in publishing. It includes a range of literary links and links to bookstores and internet design websites.

Web Addresses mentioned during the Poetry Forum

Roslyn Teirney
People may like to have a look at this poetry site:
http://www.egroups.com/group/minstrels
where you can quickly access lyrics of certain famous poems and offer the opportunity to comment on the specific poems or ask questions.

More useful poetry support material here:
http://www.poets.org/npm/npmfrmst.htm

Paul Dobber recommended http://www.sonnets.org/

Kirsten recommended http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~french/maitrise.htm
If that is not the actual page, you should click on the link that says ETC., and then a list of the poets will show up.

Carol Wilson told us
I was pleased to find that Rosen publishes new work on the BBC site http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/schools/

Chris Topfer said one of the B.Teach students recommended http://www.gigglepoetry.com

Another site http://www.poetryteacher.com, has useful information to assist with teaching students how to write a variety of poems

More Though Pieces - A Rattle Bag of Them

[Here are more possible questions to help in investigating poetry as part of school programs.]

Who would like to have discussions about i) possible poems, ii) possible poets, iii) possible books of poetry, #9; iv) possible approaches to poetry in the life of classrooms, v) some combination of these?

Are there particular poetic genres which are particularly attractive in the classroom? (Ballads, lyrics, long narrative works ……………; ghost poems, cowboy poems, school poems, political poems, love poems, wedding poems…………? )

What are good ways in which poetry reading and writing might be encouraged in the classroom and the reasons one might offer for using poetry to advance student reading and writing? [Reasons for students, parents, colleagues, yourself…]

What are the possible impediments to students realising how much poetry has to offer them?

What makes poetry a significant part of the school program? Is poetry to be the province of the English program only? If not, where else might it be placed/found?

Who wants to look at the place of poetry in a language program or another area of the curriculum [say SOSE, the Arts…]? What are the secrets/the implicit patterns in language that poetry reveals?

How do we share poetry with the young? Is reading to them, reading by them enough? What should we read to them? What should we encourage them to read? Read aloud? (Choral reading and performance?)

How does one justify poetry in the school program? To parents, to children/students, to oneself, to poets?

What are the range of student responses and follows-up that teachers use to encourage an involvement in poetry? [What questions or comments might we use to involve them?]

Can you offer suggestions for contemporary poets and poems that might be worth the attention of teachers themselves and sometimes for sharing with students?

Are there teachers interested in poetic form and the language for talking about form? What forms can you share with your students at present? What are effective ways of introducing students to language about poetic form?

Can one ‘teach’ poetry? What are the activities which effect the teaching of poetry? What is expected from the students? Could it be that one can only share poetry and work from there? [From ‘immersion’ to where…?]

Can we avoid making poetry an analytic, a psychoanalytic or a moral review or a political examination? [We murder to dissect!] Should we?

Are there teachers who have a view on how individuals develop their interest and ability in poetry? [From Kinder to Grade 12 and beyond] What suits Kinder and what suits grade 6, grade 10, grade 12 for instance?