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39 Steps to Engaging with Poetry

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39 Steps to Engaging with Poetry Features: Literature … TO ENGAGING WITH POETRY Reading and writing poems in the English classroom This is the first of a series of articles in which Trevor Millum and Chris Warren suggest 39 enjoyable approaches to poetry in the English classroom. Introduction We also believe that students’ engagement with poetry Poetry is something every pupil or student has a right should begin in Y7 and build from there. Of course, for to. It should be part of every young person’s experience fortunate students, the building will be on good at school: something which brings enjoyment in the foundations from KS 1 and 2. widest sense, something which enhances life. If this seems a long way from the experiences of your Y10 and 11 students and, perhaps, from your own experience, “The experience of a number read on. Please, read on, anyway! of schools suggests that Because of its part in high stakes testing at KS4, poetry has become a hurdle to be leapt over or a holistic and integrated scrambled across, rather than an intrinsic and rewarding part of English teaching and learning. However, the approach to poetry works not experience of a number of schools where a different only to engage students but attitude has been adopted suggests that a holistic approach works not only to engage students but also to also to improve exam results.” improve exam results. This approach means students becoming involved In the same issue of Teaching English, Peter Kahn, with poetry, becoming participants rather than introduces a ‘new poetic form’, the ‘Golden Shovel’, onlookers. In his perceptive article ‘Enjoyment and in which students select a line from an existing poem. Understanding? Poetry pedagogy for student They then create their own poem using those words as engagement’ (in issue 14 of Teaching English), Daniel the final words of their lines. This idea is very much in Xerri tackles the disjunction which has arisen the spirit of these 39 Steps which are really thirty-nine between enjoyment and understanding, arguing for ideas to engage students with poems through writing. a ‘pedagogy for engagement’ … ‘in which students’ These steps comprise a wide range of activities which opinions matter as much as those of the teacher.’ What aim to give everyone a way of getting started with their he does not make explicit is the need, in our view, for writing and some support in finding ways to continue students to write poetry as well as to read and enjoy it. and complete it. NATE | Teaching English | Issue 16 | 29 39 Steps … to Engaging with Poetry – Active approaches for the English classroom “These 39 steps Step 1 comprise a Making a List wide range A shopping list, a ‘to do’ list – it’s such a familiar way to write and it can be the basis of a satisfying poem, too. It might be a list of personal likes or dislikes, or it could be a way of describing a person or an abstract of activities concept. which aim to Rupert Brooke’s ‘These I Have Loved’ is in fact the middle section of his longer poem ‘The Great Lover’ give everyone but it can stand alone quite well. a way of These I have loved: getting started White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; with their Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust writing and Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; some support Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; in finding And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours, ways to Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon; continue and Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon complete it.” Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes; and other such-- The comfortable smell of friendly fingers, Hair’s fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year’s ferns. The complete poem can be found here: www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/great-lover Adrian Mitchell’s ‘I Like That Stuff’ is another list of personal choices and also provides an interesting template. www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/13623 Teaching Tips You can start with a topic or start with a sense (or a series of senses), e.g.,’ I like the smell of…’. Something concrete usually works best such as ‘Back to school / First day of school’ or ‘Seaside Memories’. Encourage students to think of the small things that evoke memories, e.g. ‘sand between my toes’ rather than ‘the sandy beach’ or ‘the smell of socks in the changing room’ rather than ‘PE lessons’. They should try to accumulate a bank of ideas before trying to put them into any shape. Model the approach with a shared attempt or, if you dare, a personal interpretation of, say, ‘The Staff Room’. Here’s another kind of pattern which might prove useful. ‘After Christmas’ Sorted: baubles, balls and stars, January appointments Removed: batteries from lights, wreaths from doors, notes from wallet Recycled: cards, wrapping paper, some bits of string, wishes Coiled: tinsel, tree light cables, heart-strings Boxed: a golden bird, games, memories Binned: the poor poinsettia, ragged wrappings, my old address book Remaining: candles, cake, goodwill 30 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 16 Features: Literature Step 2 Step 3 Freeze Frame Top and Tail Like a video when you have hit the pause button, many poems try to capture a This pattern lets you create a meaning-sandwich. moment – and this is something students can try also. It can be a moment from You introduce a word or phrase or line at the the past or the current lived experience. beginning of the piece, and you come back to the same word or phrase towards the end of the There are a number of well-known poems that capture a moment in time poem. Choruses work in a similar way. and one of the most famous is Wordsworth’s ‘On Westminster Bridge’. In this example, Tennyson’s ‘Break, Break, Earth has not anything to show more fair: Break’, the repeated phrase has extra resonance Dull would he be of soul who could pass by when encountered at the beginning of the A sight so touching in its majesty: final stanza, evoking echoes of heart-break. This City now doth, like a garment, wear Break, break, break, The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie And I would that my tongue could utter Open unto the fields, and to the sky; The thoughts that arise in me. All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep O, well for the fisherman’s boy, In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; That he shouts with his sister at play! Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! O, well for the sailor lad, The river glideth at his own sweet will: That he sings in his boat on the bay! Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And the stately ships go on And all that mighty heart is lying still! To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand, ‘Eden Rock’ by Charles Causley is another good example. It’s in one of the GCSE And the sound of a voice that is still! anthologies and can be found here: www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/great-lover Break, break, break Adrian Mitchell’s ‘I Like That Stuff’ is another list of personal choices and At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! also provides an interesting template. https://www.poetryarchive.org/ But the tender grace of a day that is dead poem/eden-rock Will never come back to me. ‘A Poet’s Guide to Britain’ edited by Owen Sheers has many examples and ‘I Shall Return’ by Claude McKay https://www. is a collection well worth having. Frances Cornford’s ‘The Coast: Norfolk’ poemhunter.com/poem/i-shall-return/ uses (p310) is a short accessible poem capturing a moment in a few lines. the repeated phrase throughout the poem, which is also effective. Teaching Tips If students are going to describe experience ‘now’, then the advice ‘observation, The villanelle form takes the meaning observation, observation’ is more apt than ever. Notes from all the senses need sandwich to a whole other level and it might be to be jotted down and then sifted and arranged. Poems of this type often end with a worth introducing students to Dylan Thomas’s different kind of observation – a personal reflection about the writer’s feelings. ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ (or If students are writing about the past, one technique is the ‘blind writing’ idea other examples) without the need to analyse. which I have described and demonstrated many times. Ask students to recall an event that they remember vividly and then ‘freeze frame’ the memory at a Teaching Tips crucial point. With their eyes closed they focus on that moment and write brief Coming up with the ‘meaningful phrase’ will be answers to questions you pose. Choose from the following/add others: where a challenge for many students. As with any topic, are you, who are you with, what are you wearing/what is the weather like/what a period of ‘free-association’ and jotting is useful.
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