Start by writing a few words or a phrase from the poem on the board. Ask students to ‘interrogate’ them. For example, taking a phrase from the Caribbean poet James Berry’s poem “Thoughts on my father” (without telling students the title, or the fact it is from a poem), we could write ‘my first god’ on the board. Ask students to explore the phrase, and say what it suggests or tells them:
- Ø ‘my‘: that the possessive pronoun suggests that the text is told from a personal point of view?
- Ø ‘first god‘: why a small ‘g’? Did the person have lots of gods?
- Ø ‘first‘: who would be your ‘first god’? The person you looked up to?
- Ø ‘first‘: what does this suggest? Did other gods replace the initial one?
Even before they look at the poem, the students can identify the use of language – a form of metaphor. In this way, students can see that, despite its difficulty, the language of the poem does convey meanings and effects. In fact, the whole poem can be seen through this one line.
Equally the starter activity could have begun with the title “Thoughts on my father”, by asking students to list, very quickly, the attributes and failings of a father figure close to them (parent, guardian, older member of the family).
øDealing with the whole text
Not all poems will have difficult language and ideas. However, with poems that do appear difficult, there are some simple techniques we can use to help students. The key thing is to get beyond the ‘blur of words’ on the page.
øAnnotating a poem
Annotate a poem, that is, smother the text with questions, underline the key words, or ones that don’t make sense, circle the sound patterns and so on. Annotation could be shown on an overhead projector with another poem, or the process could be a whole-class one with you making the annotations while the class suggests comments. Annotation is a particularly good technique for individual work as it helps students to formulate and marshal their own thoughts.
Once the ‘blur’ is overcome, often the more complex language issues, themes and ideas can be addressed. However, it is always helpful to get students to state what story the poem tells. The aim is not for deep meaning, which students often want to leap to first – and fail – but to state the obvious, which, until stated, might not be obvious.
G. HOW TO MOTIVATE STUDENTS TO WRITE POETRY?
A major problem facing teachers of creative writing is how to motivate their students to write poetry. Most teachers have heard one or more of their students complain, “I can’t write poetry” or “I don’t know what to write.” Either students have never had a positive experience with poetry and as a result they dislike it or they have never been exposed to poetry in their homes or in school. We, as teachers, can either ignore this area of creative writing or we can try to overcome this negative attitude toward poetry. If we don’t teach writing, whether it be poetry, prose, or compositions, who will in our schools? It is our responsibility to offer the students the opportunity to write as much as possible, for it is a lifetime skill essential for them to learn.
In this case, I do have my own viewpoints based on my own philosophy of education developed from years of teaching writing to students. I would like to share these basic observations:
(1) Students learn more when they are actively involved in a process than when they are sitting passively.
