A Poetry Teacher's Toolkit

Book 3: Style, Shape and Structure

Collette Drifte, Mike Jubb

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781134140374
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Professional poets spend many hours crafting a finished piece of work, yet we expect children in school to sit down and write when they are told to, whether they feel inspired or not. This series of four books is a toolkit to help you build a positive framework for children to read, write, understand and enjoy poetry - to bring a creative spark to the poetry classroom. A combination of featured poems, creative ideas, structured lesson plans and differentiated photocopiable activity sheets gives the series a uniquely flexible approach - which means you can use the materials in any classroom context.

If you're wary of poetry, if you think it's boring, or if you're nervous about teaching poetry, then you've chosen the right book.

Key themes covered in BOOK 3: Style, Shape and Structure are style and structure, addressing regular and standard forms, the impact of layout, free form, 'found' poetry, and concrete poetry.

Other books in the series are: BOOK 1:Words and Wordplay; BOOK 2: Rhymes, Rhythms and Rattles;and BOOK 4: Language and Performance.

1 Good Form!

Featured poems

Today’s the Day by Celia Warren

Dreamer by Brian Moses

Haiku by Japanese Masters

Triad by Adelaide Crapsey

The Warning by Adelaide Crapsey

Daughter of the Sea by Philip Gross

After the Storm by William Wordsworth

There Was a Young Bard of Japan, Anon.

My Cat is Dead by Mike Jubb

Turn the Clock Back by Charlotte Jarvis

‘A poem is never finished, only abandoned.’ (Paul Valery, 1871–1945)

Putting pattern into poems

I suppose the word ‘form’ in poetry is usually thought to mean some kind of pattern. The essential point about pattern, of course, is that something is repeated. In a rhyming poem, it’s the sound at the end of some of the lines.

But for children, a simpler, yet effective, way of putting a pattern into a poem is to build in some repetition at the beginning of lines. Brian Moses does this in his poem Dreamer (p. 41). By creating a formula for himself (‘I dreamt I was … and …’), he ensures that the piece will have both rhythm and unity. OK, in this case the final sound of each couplet is ‘ee’, but the poem would work just as well if they were all different.

WRITING ACTIVITY: I dreamt I was …

Using Dreamer as a model, get the children to write about some of the contents of a house. The poem could be called something like Neglected.

I dreamt I was a chair

but no-one sat on me.

I dreamt I was a cup

but no-one drank from me.

As with Brian’s poem, restrict them to six items plus a concluding stanza. And you may think it prudent to tell the little darlings that the toilet (but not the bath) is out of bounds! What other areas could be explored using the ‘I dreamt I was’ formula?

WRITING ACTIVITY: Good/bad poems

This is another formula that can be used many times – I call it a good/bad poem. First, you decide what you want to write about: maybe Mum or Dad, brother or sister, or someone else you know. Or it could be something like cats or snow. Next, you think up some good things, and some not-so-good things, about your subject, and fit some of them into the pattern below.

Compose one at the board with the whole class first, then let them loose.

Cats

Cats are soft and furry, but

they leave hairs on the sofa.

Cats are playful, but

they dig their claws into you.

Cats are elegant, but

they kill birds.

Cats are confusing. M.J.

The formula can be played around with:

My Mum is …, but

sometimes she …

Coming up with three ‘good’ and three ‘bad’ things isn’t too onerous, but more could get boring. I suggest to children that they come up with a ‘tidy-up’ or ‘summing-up’ line, which breaks the pattern, to end the poem, e.g. My cat, Rover, sleeps on the fridge.

Reading/collecting

Ask the children to search for, and copy out, non-rhyming poems that have repetition at the beginning of lines. The more they read and hear, the more they’ll get the idea. Here’s a little something dashed off by Amy Bulpitt of Peel Common Junior School, Gosport. It’s simple, but effective.

My Mum

My mum loves me, My mum loves my dad,

My mum loves my brother, The only thing she

Doesn’t like is

H A S S L E !

Here’s one from Nathan Bethell, also of Peel Common Junior School, Gosport:

I love	I HATE
I love T.V.	I HATE T.V.
I love sport	I HATE sport
I HATE school	I love school
I HATE work	I love work
I love Pompey	I HATE Pompey
I love Liverpool	I HATE Liverpool

I love you and I love you

WRITING ACTIVITY: More patterns

Make up your own formulae for poems, and encourage children to do the same.

Other ideas for creating pattern at the start of lines: time of the day, days of the week, months of the year, seasons, counting up, counting down.

Haiku

‘Haiku happen all the time, wherever there are people who are ‘in touch’ with the world of their senses, and with their own feeling response to it.’ (The Haiku Handbook by William J. Higginson)

‘Haiku is the poetry of meaningful touch, taste, sound, sight and smell.’ (R. H. Blyth)

Everyone knows that a haiku consists of three lines of five, seven and five syllables respectively. But, if you really want to find out about haiku, I thoroughly recommend The Haiku Handbook by William J. Higginson (ISBN 4–7700–1430–9). It’s a fascinating and comprehensive eye-opener about this, and related, forms of Japanese poetry.

Here are two facts that I’ve learnt:

• Haiku is an evolving form, with its origins as the opening stanza of a collaborative poem called renga (linked poem) or haikai-no-renga (humorous renga).

• Japanese poets do not count syllables. If they bother counting anything at all, they count different sound units called onji. A Japanese haiku translates into something nearer 12 English syllables, or even fewer.

Conclusions

• To insist that haiku is fixed in the form of a 17-syllable poem in three lines of five, seven and five syllables, is a simplistic trap.

• If the haiku of Japanese masters doesn’t translate into 17 English syllables, why should haiku written in English conform to that ‘rule’?

• As the form is still evolving, we’re free to add our tuppence worth.

• The ‘spirit’ of haiku is more important than specific rules.

Sorry if I’ve confused you. Like me, you were probably quite happy with the 5–7–5 pattern. Perhaps you’re thinking ‘So, what is a haiku if it doesn’t have rules?’ Well, it does have rules, but they are not written in stone. As a writer I have often chosen the 5–7–5 pattern because I like the discipline, the problem-solving quality. It gives me a frame and throws me back into words, forcing me to seek alternatives.

However, after reading William Higginson’s book, and doing a bit of Internet research, I now have a much broade...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• The Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• A ‘Must Read’ Chapter!
• 1 Good Form!
• 2 But is it Poetry?
• 3 You’d Better Shape Up!
• 4 More Ways Than One
• Further Reading
• Glossary
• Index