TO ENGAGING WITH POETRY - Reading and writing poems in the English classroom - NATE
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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 | 2939 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
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
complete it.” 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 16Features: 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.
is your pose (standing, lying, etc.,)/what are you holding or touching/what can
From a jumble of words and phrases something
you see/what can you hear/what (if anything) was said/what are your emotions?
usually emerges. Sometimes it takes another
Students as young as seven can write perfectly well with their eyes shut. It also
student or the teacher to spot it. Having that
works with a word processor, font colour turned to white. The resulting words
starting point does then help the writer to get
and phrases can form the final poem or become the basis for one.
going; nor does the poem have to be long.
Alternatively, you might provide them with
a selection of starting and finishing lines which
they can use or adapt. An Index of First Lines can
also be a rewarding area to scavenge. I have just
looked at one at random and my eyes fell on: ‘The
days have closed behind my back’ which seems an
intriguing place to start (and end…).
Trevor Millum and Chris Warren
are the authors of Unlocking Poetry (NATE/Routledge
2012) and members of the NATE ICT Committee
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 16 | 31… TO ENGAGING
WITH POETRY
Reading and writing poems
in the English classroom
The second instalment of this series, in which Trevor
Millum and Chris Warren suggest 39 enjoyable approaches
to poetry in the English classroom, explores shape poems,
memory poems, and poems with a final punch.
20 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 17News and Views
“The final
Step 4 lines of a
Taking Shape poem carry
The shape of the words on the page, including the spaces left blank, always forms part of the impact or
impression a poem makes. Sometimes the visual shape of the poem on the page reflects the meaning of the
extra weight.
poem. This may be obvious if the subject of the poem is something physical, such as a worm or a butterfly. The ending
Students usually enjoy creating shape poems about the concrete; it’s a greater challenge for them
to interpret the abstract. A poem about something abstract requires a more subtle or indirect approach.
of any text
However, you can begin with something quite physical, such as a balloon or a ball, and use it as a stepping off is important
point for reflections on feelings – for example, being bouncy, cheerful and lively.
but the brevity
This example, ‘Earthworm’ by Leonard Clark (www.sheerpoetry.co.uk/junior/literacy-hour/year-3/
of most
shape-poems) is aimed at a Primary audience. However, it is a clever use of the technique and well worth poems makes
sharing, along with other seemingly simple examples. There are some further examples on this site:
https://qwiklit.com/2014/05/27/10-poems-that-look-like-what-they-mean/
the ending
It is a short step from words in the shape of something to calligraphic poems like this, written by a
proportionally
Japanese student many years ago: more
significant.”
Teaching Tips
As you will notice from ‘Butterfly’, and indeed from the other examples, the fact that appearance is going
to be a prominent feature should not detract from the importance of the words. It’s disappointing to find an
attractive looking poem only to read it and discover something quite banal. So, the motivation, if you like, is
the attractive presentation, but the words need to be attractive too.
In the writing, you are looking for quality, not quantity, though the writer does need as sufficient number
of words to make the shape he or she has in mind. Some suggestions for starting points:
• scissors or other cutting implements: the shape is quite simple and the words can easily have deeper
meanings (lost friendships, sharp remarks...)
• weather – sunshine, rain, storm, etc., – fits well with various emotions
• boats – especially simple sailing boats – connections with arriving, leaving, distances
Finally, a tip if you are using Word. You can create a watermark in a given shape which allows you to then
write on top of it and make the words fit the outline relatively easily. Page layout > Watermark > Custom
watermark and select a picture (a line drawing works well from clip art or Google images).
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 17 | 2139 Steps … to Engaging with Poetry – Reading and writing poems in the English classroom
Step 5 Step 6
Final Lines I Remember
The final lines of a poem carry extra weight. The ending of any text is Poems about memories are common. The mark of a
important but the brevity of most poems makes the ending successful poem about a personal memory is that it will
proportionally more significant. Some poets use the final lines to have impact and meaning for someone else, someone
underline or clarify the message of a poem, others may use it as a other than the person writing. The poem needs to be
challenge, adding something which makes the reader think again. In written with sufficient detail to create the picture
yet other cases, the writer uses the final lines for comic effect, the (including the emotions) without over-burdening the
equivalent of the punch line of a joke. reader. In essence, this is true of most writing! The
feelings, the emotions can often be conveyed without
This example, ‘Song’ by Arthur Waley, provides a nice, stating them explicitly.
straightforward example:
Here we are focusing on memories from some time
I had a bicycle called ‘Splendid’,
ago, from childhood or young adulthood. ‘Crossing
A cricket bat called ‘The Rajah’,
the Loch’ by Kathleen Jamie is a good example and
Eight box-kites and Scots soldiers
can be found in the AQA anthology ‘Moon on the
With kilts and red guns.
I had an album of postmarks, Tides’. The first stanza is one long question, beginning
A Longfellow with pictures, ‘Remember how we…?’ and the writer goes on to say
Corduroy trousers that creaked, that she has forgotten certain things. This gives the
A pencil with three colours. poem an honesty, for we all have gaps of recall even in
powerful memories.
Where do old things go to? Wordsworth’s ‘The Prelude’ is one of the best
Could a cricket bat be thrown away? known poems of memory and, coincidentally, one of
Where do the years go to? the most quoted extracts also concerns a boat on the
water. Here is a short sample:
The Longfellow would presumably be ‘The Song of Hiawatha’. I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
You can easily imagine these childhood possessions and the And as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
realisation that you don’t know where they are. ‘Whatever Went heaving through the water like a swan;
happened to…?’ The poet adds an extra weight with the last line When, from behind that craggy steep till then
which extends the thought into a more philosophical area. The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
It should not be difficult to find other examples of significant
As if with voluntary power instinct,
endings – the last lines of Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods on
Upreared its head.
a Snowy Evening’, for example, or, to take a poem which may
appeal to some students even if they don’t fully understand it, Another helpful example is Thomas Hood’s melancholic
Yeats’ wonderful ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ which little poem, ‘I Remember, I Remember’, which begins:
ends ‘Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams.’
Finally, here is a good example of a poem which uses the last I remember, I remember,
line as a punch line: The house where I was born,
‘Distracted, the Mother said to her Boy’ by Gregory Harrison The little window where the sun
(the second poem at http://inquiryunlimited.org/lit/poetry/ Came peeping in at morn;
child_fam_poems.html). He never came a wink too soon,
Nor brought too long a day,
But now, I often wish the night
Teaching Tips
Had borne my breath away!
Those looking for a subject could emulate Waley and use a list as the
main content. The final lines do not have to be questions, they could The three poems mentioned include free verse (Jamie),
be statements or even exclamations: ‘I never found out…’ , ‘I wonder…’ . blank verse (Wordsworth) and regular rhyming verse
Nor does the list have to be of things that have been lost: it could be (Hood), which should provide evidence that each can
any list which is then followed by a ‘But…’ – a list of favourite foods,
be used effectively.
for example, ending with ‘But I hate … chocolate fudge dessert’ (or
equivalent).
Teaching Tips
Moving on from this approach, students could be encouraged to
A starting point for many students might be the ‘I
describe a scene from childhood (the past) and then finish it with a
remember, I remember’ pattern, which does not have to
thought, looking back (the present). It might be a regret (‘I wish I had
continue ‘the house where I was born’ but could lead in
said sorry to…’) or relief (‘I’m glad I don’t have to ….. any more’) or a
other directions, for example, ‘the street where I used
number of other emotions.
to play’, ‘the playground of the school’, ‘the journey to
my…..’ and so on. Every student should be able to manage
one stanza at least – and it sometimes works to combine
stanzas from several different students.
Trevor Millum and Chris Warren
are the authors of Unlocking Poetry (NATE/Routledge 2012)
and members of the NATE ICT Committee
22 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 17… TO ENGAGING
WITH POETRY
Reading and writing poems
in the English classroom
The third instalment of this series, in which
Trevor Millum and Chris Warren suggest 39
enjoyable approaches to poetry in the English
classroom, explores observational poems,
personification poems, and inclusive poems.
68 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 18Features: Creative English
“Here we
Step 7 wish to
Eyes that see encourage the
Looking and seeing is different to just looking. Sometimes we notice something which catches our attention in
a particular way. The examples provided below are not intended to mirror the long and detailed observations
penetrating
and sketches made by the landscape painter or portrait artist. Here we wish to encourage the penetrating glance that
glance that enables us to make a mental note of something seen or heard – which we can then attempt to
recapture in words.
enables us
to make a
‘Nettles’, by Edward Thomas, is one of his best-known short poems which focuses on something
mental note
usually overlooked or not thought worthy of attention. of something
Tall nettles cover up as they have done seen or heard
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough
Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:
– which we can
Only the elm butt tops the nettles now. then attempt
to recapture
This corner of the farmyard I like most
As well as any bloom upon a flower
in words.”
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.
The poem is not at all ‘flowery’: it tells what is there and how he feels about it. However, not all is as
straightforward as might appear. Thomas has taken great care over the phrasing, the line length and
the almost inconspicuous rhyme. Read aloud, your students may not notice that there is a rhyme. On
the page, it is a little more obvious.
John Betjeman builds up his description of ‘A Bay in Anglesey’ with a simple list:
Here at my feet in the short cliff grass
Are shells, dried bladderwrack, broken glass,
Pale blue squills and yellow rock roses…
The following extracts are notable for the simple things observed – mud, TV aerials – and for the
images which bring them vividly to life.
Television aerials, Chinese characters
In the lower sky, wave gently in the smoke.
(from ‘On Roofs of Terry Street’ by Douglas Dunn)
This shore looks back to England: two hundred yards
Of tide, and the boats fratching on their leashes
Like dogs that sniff a stranger.
…
The tide
Turns and slides back, and banks of mud
Heave up like waking sleepers pushing the sheets aside…
(from ‘Walney Island’ by Norman Nicholson)
Teaching Tips
Clearly, this kind of writing cannot be achieved without some observation. As a homework, simply ask
students to pick a subject, preferably a seemingly ordinary, everyday one, and jot down five or six things
about it. If a comparison occurs to them, so much the better but it is not essential, as we have seen. Brevity is
the key here so when they come to write their poem, insist that it be short!
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 18 | 6939 Steps … to Engaging with Poetry – Reading and writing poems in the English classroom
Step 8 Step 9
It’s Personal We begin
Personification, unlike some literary terms (onomatopoeia…), is easy to It is a simple idea to take a word which is unusual to find
spell and says what it is. Students will have encountered the term way at the start of a poem and, well, use it to begin a poem.
back in KS2 but may need reminding. It’s a device that is easy to recognise What word could be simpler than ‘We’? Yet there are very
in prose and in poetry and one which most students enjoy using. In this few poems which start that way as a browse through
Step, we are focusing on personifying the weather – a good example of an Index of First Lines will reveal. So, it’s a challenge –
how one can take something very familiar and make it fresh. but one which we can make more approachable by
offering a model: ‘We are the Music Makers’ by Arthur
Here is the first third of ‘The Wind in a Frolic’ by William Howitt O’Shaughnessy, originally simply titled ‘Ode’.
(1792–1879). The whole poem can be found online, for example
here: www.bartleby.com/360/1/104.html
The first two lines are quite famous; the rest of the
The wind one morning sprang up from sleep, poem less so. Here is the first stanza:
Saying, “Now for a frolic! Now for a leap!
We are the music makers,
Now for a mad-cap galloping chase!
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
I’ll make a commotion in every place!”
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
So it swept with a bustle right through a great town,
And sitting by desolate streams;—
Creaking the signs, and scattering down
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Shutters; and whisking, with merciless squalls,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Old women’s bonnets and gingerbread stalls:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
There never was heard a much lustier shout,
Of the world for ever, it seems.
As the apples and oranges tumbled about;
And the urchins, that stand with their thievish eyes It is also, I believe, the origin of the term ‘movers
Forever on watch, ran off each with a prize. and shakers’. The poem can be found on a number
Then away to the field it went blustering and humming, of sites, though often only the first three stanzas are
And the cattle all wondered whatever was coming; reproduced, as here: www.poetryfoundation.org/
It plucked by the tails the grave matronly cows, poems/54933/ode
And tossed the colts’ manes all over their brows, The complete ‘Ode’: en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ode_
Till, offended at such a familiar salute, (O%27Shaughnessy)
They all turned their backs and stood sulkily mute.
One may also be reminded of the speech from Henry V
(This is a good poem to read aloud and, as it is about 60 lines long, can which does not, however begin with this extract.
be divided up between the members of a class, two lines each. Two
lines is not too much to learn and it makes a satisfying end to a lesson We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
– especially if you can entice a visitor into the room – to go through For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
the whole thing without looking at the words. You need to practice…) Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
James Stephens’ ‘The Wind’ has a less playful feel: And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
The wind stood up and gave a shout.
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
He whistled on his fingers and
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
Kicked the withered leaves about
And thumped the branches with his hand
And said he’d kill and kill and kill, Teaching Tips
And so he will! And so he will! Regardless of how much of the poem you decide to share
with the class, focus on the first two lines and ask students
Another type of weather that lends itself to personification is fog, as to come up with variants of their own. You might start
in Carl Sandburg’s poem which begins ‘The fog comes/on little cat feet’. the ball rolling with something like
We are the setters of tests / We are the markers of books
Teaching Tips
A challenge for students is to find another type of weather to personify.
They could write from their own perspectives (‘We are
For those who struggle to get started, push some ideas around as a class.
the kickers of footballs…) or from those of other people or
‘How can we personify rain? Tears are obvious but can we come up
even animals (‘We are the chasers of cats…’). They should
with something fresh – the clouds sowing seeds, perhaps? Sunshine is
aim for at least four lines and perhaps try to write from
often seen as benevolent and can be personified as a loving mother, for
at least two different viewpoints. O’Shaughnessy’ poem
instance, beaming, warming, caressing the earth. However, too much
has a very distinct rhyme but a verse on this theme will
sunshine can be bad. The sun becomes a tyrant’ …and so on.
be effective without. The underlying beat, though, is
They do not have to create a long poem (see how short Sandburg’s
something they should notice and try to incorporate.
is). One strong image is often enough, as many a haiku demonstrates.
Alternatively, you can aim to create a class poem, combining a number
of suggestions. This might lead to a two part poem with, for example, the
first verse being positive about sun or rain or snow and the second verse
beginning ‘But…’ and presenting the opposite point of view. Trevor Millum and Chris Warren
are the authors of Unlocking Poetry (NATE/Routledge 2012)
and members of the NATE ICT Committee.
70 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 18… TO ENGAGING
WITH POETRY
Reading and writing poems
in the English classroom
The fourth instalment of this series, in which
Trevor Millum and Chris Warren suggest 39
enjoyable approaches to poetry in the English
classroom, explores rhyme, characterisation
and form.
20 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 19News and Views
“Form echo
Step 10 poems borrow
Form Echo the structure
Form echo poems borrow the structure and some of the words from other examples of writing, echo or
copy some of their features, but aim to do something new. So you may write a poem in the form of a recipe,
and some of
or a diary entry, or an obituary, or a Lonely Hearts letter and so on. the words
They are sometimes quite funny, sometimes ironic, sometimes deadly serious. Readers enjoy spotting
where the form comes from and that adds to the pleasure they get out of the poem.
from other
Of course, style, mode and register will be explored further in English Language studies. Form Echo examples
allows student to play with the ideas without getting bogged down in terminology.
of writing,
Examples include Edwin Morgan: “Little Mr Lonely Hearts”, and Peter Porter: “Your Attention Please”.
echo or copy
Here’s a 1940s Glenn Miller hit song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e42mD7OW4U some of their
Moonlight Cocktail features, but
Couple of jiggers of moonlight Cool it in the summer breeze; aim to do
And add a star Serve it in the starlight
something
Pour in the blue of a June night Underneath the trees;
And one guitar You’ll discover tricks like these
new. They are
Mix in a couple of dreamers Are sure to make sometimes
And there you are: Your moonlight cocktail please quite funny,
Lovers hail the moonlight cocktail
Follow the simple directions sometimes
Now add a couple of flowers, And they will bring
ironic,
A drop of dew; Life of another complexion
Stir for a couple of hours Where you’ll be keen;
sometimes
Till dreams come true; You’ll awake in the morning deadly serious.”
As to the number of kisses And start to sing:
It’s up to you - Moonlight cocktails are the thing!
Moonlight cocktails need a few!
Writing Suggestions
Why not try echoing the form of these types of writing?
• A menu
• A recipe
• A government document
• An article from a tabloid newspaper
• Instructions for a game
• A problem page letter – or the reply to one
• Book cover blurb
• Book review
• Safety warnings
• A shopping list
• Adverts of one kind or another
• Writing on gravestones or other memorials
Teaching Tips
You could ask the class to write a poem that echoes the form of menu, an invitation to a party or a recipe.
But the recipe might be the perfect recipe for romance (nothing to do with food, but echoing the style used
by recipe writers). Do you see the idea? What might be the recipe for War or a recipe for Peace? Form echo
poems are amazingly good fun to write, especially if you can think of a good twist.
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 19 | 2139 Steps … to Engaging with Poetry – Reading and writing poems in the English classroom
Step 11 Step 12
Mentriloquism Clever Patterns
Ventriloquism is the art of throwing the voice. This is an activity suitable for students in Y7 or 8, though the ideas could
A ventriloquist can make a puppet seem as though be applied elsewhere.
it’s alive and talking. If they think about it at all, students tend to view the organisation of
Mentriloquism is a made-up word – it means the poems as words in ragged lines or in neat couplets or four line verses.
art of throwing the mind. A mentriloquist imagines However, the variety of forms used by poets is something worth exploring
what someone else is thinking and makes that person – and enjoying.
come alive as fully believable. Or picks an inanimate
object and makes it talk.
It’s a very common trick with dramatists, who The example here, ‘The Snail’, manages to employ an unusual
have to create a great range of characters, some of pattern. The rhyme scheme incorporates three successive rhymes
them very, very different from the writer. as well as a rhyme which is echoed in the preceding or succeeding
Mentriloquism is popular in poetry too. You verse. Some of the words (betides, chattels) might need explaining.
invent characters, concentrating on their thoughts Word order is also something to look at: verbs (for instance) moved
and emotions, and then make them say or do things to the end of lines to allow a rhyme can sometimes confuse readers
in line with the personality you’ve created. It isn’t and is a trick used less often by contemporary writers.
exactly like a play (though it can be very dramatic)
To grass, or leaf, or fruit, or wall,
because in a poem you’re sometimes trying to say
something extra – make a point or argue an idea that The snail sticks close, nor fears to fall,
isn’t said easily without poetry. As if he grew there, house and all
These poems usually focus on one character. Together.
Within that house secure he hides,
Some examples: When danger imminent betides
Duffy: Education for Leisure; Stealing Of storm, or other harm besides
Armitage: Hitcher Of weather.
Browning: His Last Duchess
Plath: The Mirror Give but his horns the slightest touch,
His self-collecting power is such,
He shrinks into his house, with much
Writing Suggestions Displeasure.
Invent a character very different from yourself. Where’er he dwells, he dwells alone,
• Rich or poor Except himself has chattels none,
• Good or evil Well satisfied to be his own
Whole treasure.
• Old or young
• Troubled or carefree Thus, hermit-like, his life he leads,
• Male or female Nor partner of his banquet needs,
And if he meets one, only feeds
Take an everyday object and give it a voice. The faster.
For instance:
Who seeks him must be worse than blind,
• a crushed beer can
(He and his house are so combined,)
• an angle-poise lamp If, finding it, he fails to find
• a pair of scissors Its master.
• a reel of sticky tape
William Cowper (pronounced Cooper)
Teaching Tips
Find as many examples as you can and enjoy them Teaching Tips
with the class. Give students a free rein in inventing Have some anthologies or, if there is internet access, a site such as Poem
characters or characteristics but explain that there’s Hunter available, so that students can research different verse patterns.
only one rule – don’t completely make up the details. There might be a competition for those who can come up with the most
Everything invented should be based on something unusual. Now ask them to write a poem of at least two verses using a
they’ve felt themselves or seen in other people. They specific pattern of their own invention. It may include a rhyme scheme
can distort it or exaggerate it, but it still needs to be but does not have to: rhythm / syllable count can be sufficient to define a
based on something real. If this rule is not kept, it’ll pattern. If they are stuck for a topic, suggest focusing on another creature
be like watching a useless ventriloquist – the magic – hedgehog, mouse, caterpillar, moth…
just doesn’t happen. For a poem of this type to work,
the audience has to believe in the character. The trick
to creating ‘believability’ is to keep the connections Trevor Millum and Chris Warren
with reality, even if they are stretched a long way! are the authors of Unlocking Poetry (NATE/Routledge 2012) and members of the
NATE ICT Committee
22 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 19… TO ENGAGING
WITH POETRY
Reading and writing poems
in the English classroom
The fifth instalment of this series, in which
Trevor Millum and Chris Warren suggest 39
enjoyable approaches to poetry in the English
classroom, explores observations, negatives
and powerful phrases.
20 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 20News and Views
Step 13 Step 14
Life Drawing Just Say No
Life drawing poems mean literally that. They are not done A Just Say No poem defines things through negatives. Instead of
from memory. Writers sit in front of the object, or experience saying what a thing IS, you say what it is NOT. Simple as that. This
the feelings and sensations, as they write. It means picking can lead to quite complicated and interesting pieces of writing.
up a notebook and going out to look at a river if we want to
write a poem about a river.
Look. Listen. Absorb all the sensation you can. Think Example: Philip Larkin – ‘If My Darling’
hard. Then write. Take down notes, words, or phrases and let
If My Darling (extract)
the ideas flow. Keep writing.
If my darling were once to decide
Not to stop at my eyes,
Examples include:
But to jump, like Alice, with floating skirt into my head,
• Hopkins: ‘The Windhover’, or any sample from his
notebooks (the description of the bubbling brook is She would find no table and chairs,
especially good.) No mahogany claw-footed sideboards,
• Lawrence: plenty of examples – e.g., Mosquito No undisturbed embers;
• Larkin: ‘Whitsun Weddings’ The tantalus would not be filled, nor the fender-seat cosy,
Nor the shelves stuffed with small-printed books for the Sabbath,
Nor the butler bibulous, the housemaids lazy:
Extracts from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ notebook
…the moon outside was roughing the lake with silver and She would find herself looped with the creep of varying light,
dinting and tooling it with sparkling holes. Monkey-brown, fish grey, a string of infected circles
DAY bright. Sea calm, with little walking wavelets Loitering like bullies, about to coagulate; …
Looking down into the thick ice of our pond I found the
imprisoned air-bubbles nothing at random but starting from Teaching Tips
centres and in particular one most beautifully regular white As an introduction, perhaps, play this game: describe a mystery
brush of them, each spur of it a curving string of beaded and object with one rule – you can’t say anywhere what the object is
diminishing bubbles. directly; you just describe what it is not like. Can your audience
guess the identity of the object?
FIRST fine; then on the road a thunderstorm with hard rain,
the thunder musical and like gongs and rolling in great floors Read the poem. Put emphasis on the argument, as you read
of sound. it, stressing “not” “no” and “nor”, then stress “would find”, “she
would also”. Ask class to investigate the basic structure of the
DROPS of rain hanging on rails etc. seen with only the lower
poem – what is it about? Draw as many responses as you can.
rim lighted like nails (of fingers).
Finally try to direct the attention to:
a) the images and what they imply
Writing Suggestions
b) the positive and negative definitions of personality, based on
Go out and sit under a tree. Look very, very carefully
misguided expectations
at it. What’s the bark like? What is its colour? What
sound is it making, if any (trees can be very noisy in the Ask the class to write a poem about another person entering
wind)? Record little incidents (a leaf suddenly falls; a their minds – mother, brother, sister, beloved, father etc. The
bird, disturbed, flies off in a panic; a fly lands on your first part of the poem will be about what that person will not find,
notebook). All that directly observed writing is part of the second part will be about what the person will find (and some
life-drawing. things in the dream-like world of the mind will be distinctly
strange! Surrealist art could be used here.)
Stress that the approach should be through images and
Teaching Tips metaphors (look at the original).
If it isn’t feasible to take a class out into the field to write,
you may wish to set this task as a homework challenge.
Perhaps a visit to a favourite place. But the key thing is that Writing Suggestions
the writing needs to be done there, and not recalled in Imagine, like Larkin, that someone has got into your head. First
tranquillity after the event. Notebook and pen, or Dictaphone, say what that person would NOT find. This could reveal what the
essential equipment. person is expecting to find – their prejudices or assumptions about
you. You could finish the poem by say what’s really there, and it
could be startling or strange.
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 20 | 2139 Steps … to Engaging with Poetry – Reading and writing poems in the English classroom
Step 15
Setting a Jewel
A lovely way to write spin-off poems from almost any text you are studying. The technique goes like this:
choose an especially numinous phrase (the jewel) from a poem or other text and put it into a poem of your
own (the setting). The subject of your new poem can be completely different from the original.
Example: Powerful phrases can be found in a The jewel in this example is ‘What is the meaning
wide range of texts and what strikes one person as of trees’. Below I use the same word-patterns as
Gaerard Manley Hopkins special may leave someone else indifferent. It’s a the poet, but alter the subject. I marked with a blue
personal choice. For illustration purposes, I have and yellow highlighter the patterns I wanted to
chosen a phrase from ‘Hurricane Hits England’ by recreate in my setting:
Grace Nichols.
What is the meaning of flies
Hurricane Hits England (extract) buzzing frantic as bees
What is the meaning of trees their furry legs
Falling heavy as whales their feverish wings?
Their crusted roots
Their cratered graves? What is the meaning of clouds
sailing white as sheep
Their fluffy locks
Philip Larkin Their fleecy loneliness?
Writing Suggestions
You don’t need to take anything more from the original poem than the special phrase you have chosen, but you
may, like me, want to copy the way that the poet used the phrase, but with words of your own. It’s open to you!
Teaching Tips
Sometimes when we read a text a word or a phrase jumps out and resonates very strongly. We can’t always
explain why the words are attractive. They just are. This technique celebrates, and allows focus on, these
special, almost magical verbal encounters.
A way into it might be to choose a poem where there are a number of lovely turns of phrase, then ask
students in pairs to identify the ones they especially like. A gentle discussion of ‘why?’ could follow, always
Grace Nichols allowing the response that it cannot be explained. Then each student takes their chosen phrase and writes
a poem inspired by it, and including it.
Trevor Millum and Chris Warren
are the authors of Unlocking Poetry (NATE/Routledge 2012) and members of the NATE ICT Committee
22 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 20… TO ENGAGING
WITH POETRY
Reading and writing poems
in the English classroom
The sixth instalment of this series, in which
Trevor Millum and Chris Warren suggest 39
enjoyable approaches to poetry in the English
classroom, explores questions and answers,
compound words, and ‘plus and minus’ lists.
42 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 21Features: Creative Reading
Step 16
Compound words
Compound words are created when two words are joined together to do a new job. They are most commonly
joined by a hyphen, but sometimes poets decide to hide the join, and they spell the two words as one long new
word. It’s like marrying words! You can generate hundreds of new words this way. Simply grab two unsuspecting
partners, put them together, and bingo, they give birth to a whole new idea, with both parents’ genes mixed in.
Compound words team up, like a pair of yoked oxen, to do the work you want them to. Sometimes the
words don’t get on with each other, like partners in an unhappy marriage, and then sparks fly. Compounds
like this are sometimes oxymorons, where the meanings of the words fight and you have a mental paradox
to deal with – ‘the sharp-soft grass’.
Making compound words is addictive and fun. Some well-known poets and writers are especially fond of
them. You can spot thousands of compounds in Shakespeare and Dickens. GM Hopkins, Ted Hughes and
James Joyce were all addicts too.
Examples:
‘Inversnaid’ – Gerard Manley Hopkins
This darksome burn, horseback brown, Degged with dew, dappled with dew
His rollrock highroad roaring down, Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
Flutes and low to the lake falls home. And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth What would the world be, once bereft
Turns and twindles over the broth Of wet and of wilderness? Let them be left,
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning, O let them be left, wildness and wet;
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Ulysses – James Joyce. Here Joyce describes a giant:
The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower was that of a broadshouldered deepchested
stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freelyfreckled shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded deepvoiced
barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero.
Writing Suggestions
Do a bit of research. Make a list of compound words:
a) in everyday use
b) in poetry you are studying
What features do they have in common? What word-classes are used to create the most common compound
words? Look at the Hopkins poem and analyse these.
Try loading a large chunk of text into a Word document (a novel, grabbed from the Internet?) and then search
for the hyphens. Some will be in the middle of compound words. There isn’t an easy way to search for compounds
that are spelled as one word, except careful reading. Try some of the patterns you have found through your
research. For instance, you may want to experiment with NounAdjective compound words, or NounNouns.
When you make a compound word, you can decide what work it will do. You can force it to do the job
of the main word classes – Verb, Noun, Adjective. For example, when Hopkins uses the phrase ‘horseback
brown’ he uses a common compound (Noun+Noun=horse+back=horseback) to define the exact colour of the
stream. Brilliant!
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Now try using compound words in a poem of your own.
Teaching Tips
A good place to start might be with oxymorons, since they are great fun to create, and the word itself has
amusing appeal. Oxymorons show the power of paradox and opposites; they snap the mind from one pole
to the other, making a spark jump across the terminals with a sudden jolt of energy.
As with the Hopkins example, a piece of creative writing describing a scene from nature – an insect,
or a stream, or an ancient tree – gives plenty of scope for inventive uses of language, and the generation
of brand-new compound words!
Or you could use the James Joyce example – a string of new compound words to describe a single
person or thing.
James Joyce
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 21 | 4339 Steps … to Engaging with Poetry – Reading and writing poems in the English classroom
Step 17 Step 18
Question and Answer Plus and Minus
A poem that asks itself a series of questions and then answers them. A poem Poems that weigh up the positives and negatives
where the poem has a conversation with itself. of something.
Examples: Example:
‘What Were They Like’, Denise Levertov ‘Poem’ – Simon Armitage (an extract)
Romeo and Juliet, Act 4, Scene 3 – where Juliet contemplates drinking And if it snowed and snow covered the drive
the potion He took a spade and tossed it to one side.
In Act 4, Scene 3 of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet will do anything to avoid the And always tucked his daughter up at night
arranged marriage, set for the following day. She’s desperate to the point of And slippered her the one time that she lied.
suicide. Friar Lawrence has come up with a plan involving a sleeping potion.
And every week he tipped up half his wage.
She asks herself a series of questions. Is she being tricked? Is the potion
really a poison? She tries to answer the questions to help herself decide, and And what he didn’t spend each week he saved
to calm her nerves And praised his wife for every meal she made
What if this mixture do not work at all? And once, for laughing, punched her in the face.
Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?
No, no: this shall forbid it: lie thou there. Writing Suggestions
[Laying down her dagger] Try using the same model as the example:
What if it be a poison, which the friar • Write a poem about someone’s actions
Subtly hath ministered to have me dead, • 4 lines per verse, all starting with the
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonoured, word ‘and’
Because he married me before to Romeo? • Alternate lines rhyme
I fear it is: and yet, methinks, it should not, • Two or three positive comments with a last
For he hath still been tried a holy man. line that suggests something negative.
How if, when I am laid into the tomb, Or you could try two or three negative actions
I wake before the time that Romeo with one redeeming positive.
Come to redeem me? there’s a fearful point!
Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault,
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in, Teaching Tips
The model example talks about a man’s role as
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
a father, husband and son. It has the feel of an
honest appraisal of a life, perhaps at a funeral –
the theme being ‘everyone has a mixed record;
Writing Suggestions
no one is perfect.’
In the Levertov example there are six numbered questions, followed by six
Students could write about sportsmen and
numbered answers. This is an excellent model to follow. Once you get the idea,
women, politicians, singers, or celebrities.
you might want to vary the pattern, but to begin with try a numbered set of
They could point up the flaws in otherwise
questions, and then a set of answers to your own questions.
excellent careers. Or they could tackle a
You may want to imagine a conversation with a reporter (as in ‘What Were
mother’s record. Or perhaps the redeeming
They Like’), so that the questions are in one voice and the answers in another
good actions in a life of crime. They could
character’s voice. Perhaps the questioner doesn’t really know and the answerer
perhaps take the perspective of looking back
knows more than he or she is saying. In the Shakespeare example the questions
on a life, listing good deeds and bad, as if
and answers are all inside Juliet and explore her deep fears.
remembering someone who has gone.
Imagine a visitor from another planet were to ask six questions about Earth.
What would be the answers? Or imagine an Interview with someone who
doesn’t know you or who has misguided ideas about you.
Trevor Millum
Teaching Tips and Chris Warren
• The Shakespeare extract shows the power of this form to explore internal are the authors of Unlocking
dialogue. Poetry (NATE/Routledge
2012) and members of the
• The questions can be about some universal worry, or something deeply NATE ICT Committee
personal.
• Once writers have generated the questions, the answers will flow.
44 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 21Features: English – The Big Picture
… TO ENGAGING
WITH POETRY
Reading and writing poems
in the English classroom
The seventh instalment of this series, in which
Trevor Millum and Chris Warren suggest 39 enjoyable
approaches to poetry in the English classroom, explores
poems with a twist, poems with an unusual perspective,
and poems that exploit compressed expression.
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 6139 Steps … to Engaging with Poetry – Reading and writing poems in the English classroom
Step 19 Step 20
Distillation Life seen from another angle
One of the ways of looking at poetry is to see it as a compressed form of Poems can offer a way of looking at life from an unusual
expression, in which every word that is not absolutely necessary has been perspective. For example, from the point of view of an
squeezed out. Thinking of the poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins, you animal or an outsider. The ultimate outsider is the alien
can see where this might lead: sometimes a compression so severe that or a robot.
it is hard to comprehend. Nevertheless, the idea of distilling sentences
or thoughts until they become more focused and intense is a useful way
Examples
of talking about poems with students, especially if they don’t ‘get’ poetry.
Craig Raine’s ‘A Martian Sends a Postcard Home’ is one
of the most well-known and can easily be found on-
Example line. It begins:
Here’s an example from a Y9 student: Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
My cat and some are treasured for their markings --
is as vain as a film star they cause the eyes to melt
her green eyes shine or the body to shriek without pain.
like emeralds
I have never seen one fly, but
she dribbles in contentment
sometimes they perch on the hand.
lazy as a cow
The poem becomes a series of metaphors to unravel
but graceful as a ballerina
or, really, riddles to solve. Students shouldn’t leave it
she’s a tightrope walker at that, though. Get them to discuss how successful
on padded paws they think the comparisons are. Are some better
my furry thought out than others? (‘…cause the eyes to melt’
fat cat might be deemed effective whereas ‘snores’ might be
questioned in the lines ‘a haunted apparatus sleeps, /
You can see how the poem has been distilled from a much longer that snores when you pick it up.’) The next stage would
description: be to invent some descriptions of their own. For
My cat is as vain as a film star or a queen like Cleopatra. She purrs like she has example, ‘Bright metal capsules eat their owners and
an engine deep down in her throat or her chest and her evil green eyes shine in hurry along dry river beds’.
her face like emeralds. She meows pathetically and gets ignored or fed. But later The poem that begins ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, /
behind her half-closed eyelids she dribbles in contentment. She sleeps all day, The king-size bed is soft and deep... / I sleep right in the
lazy as a cow but I suppose she’s as gentle and as graceful as a ballerina when centre groove / My human can hardly move!’ is variously
she wants to be. When she walks along the wall it’s as if she’s a tightrope walker titled ‘A Cat’s Prayer’ and ‘A Dog’s Prayer’. Either way, it
on padded paws. When she’s asleep she’s just like any other furry fat cat. sees the world from the point of view of an animal.
Can students find others written from an animal’s
point of view?
Teaching tips
Set students a homework task to observe an animal, whether it be a
pet, a bird in the garden or even an insect on the window pane. They Writing Suggestions
should write down everything they see or hear: what it looks like, what Students generally find it enjoyable to write from the
it does, how it moves, what it reminds them of… These notes are to be point of view of an animal but may need help in order to
brought back and written up into a short descriptive passage. These give the poem structure. ‘A day in the life of…’ or ‘Five
descriptions can be shared in groups with group members underlining things I dislike about my human’ provide plenty of
or highlighting phrases they like. The descriptions are then returned opportunities for an unusual take on life and for humour,
to their authors to whom it is suggested they remove all the words that of course. Humour would be replaced by serious message
have not been highlighted and see what is left. Further small edits can if the animal in question was an endangered one, for
be made but the aim should be concision. Arrange each phrase on a new instance. Alternatively, they might like to consider
line and the result will almost certainly be a poem. themselves robots. ‘Beep beep / I wake / voice calls / I eat’
This activity should not only produce some interesting writing but – and so on through a school day with bells determining
act as an eye-opener with regard to the nature of poetry. Many poems one’s actions.
appear to have gone through such a process, whether literally or in the
mind of the poet. Think of Edward Thomas’s ‘Tall Nettles’ for example. Teaching Tips
Use this opportunity to discuss the notion of persona.
Writing Suggestions We all tend to assume that, if written in the first person,
In addition to the approach described above, students could take an the voice of the poem is the voice of the poet and this,
existing passage of fiction or non-fiction and select the phrases that of course, is often not the case. The use of a Martian
appeal to them, copying them out and arranging them as they think voice, or a dog’s voice makes it clear that the poet can
most effective. The description of the Red Room from Jane Eyre write from any viewpoint. Some poems are not so
would be one powerful passage to use. Do not exclude non-fiction. obvious, especially when the poet is employing irony.
Travel books and even cookery books can provide some rich material! If appropriate, seek out and discuss one or two of these.
62 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22You can also read
