Countdown to Poetry Writing

Step by Step Approach to Writing Techniques for 7-12 Years

Steve Bowkett

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135246419
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Developing children's writing abilities boosts their confidence, creates enjoyment and relevance in the task and cultivates a range of decision-making and problem-solving skills that can then be applied across the curriculum. The Countdown series provides all the support you need in helping children to improve their prose, poetry and non-fiction writing.

This guide provides all the support you need in helping pupils to improve their poetry writing. Countdown to Poetry Writing is a comprehensive and flexible resource that you can use in different ways, including:

• stand-alone modules that cover all the essential aspects of writing a poem, including word play, use of metaphor, rhyme and many others
• countdown flowchart providing an overview showing how modules are linked and how teachers can progress through them with the pupils
• photocopiable activity sheets for each module that show how to make the decisions and solve the problems that all writers face along the road from first idea to finished piece of work
• teachers' notes for modules, with tips and guidance, including how modules can be used in the classroom, links to other modules and curriculum links, and advice on helping and guiding pupils in their writing
• a self-study component so that children can make their own progress through the materials, giving young writers a sense of independence in thinking about their work and offering built-in scaffolding of tasks so that less experienced or less confident children get more support from the resource
• 'headers' for each module showing where along the 'countdown path' you are at that point.

In short, Countdown to Poetry Writing saves valuable planning time and gives you all the flexibility you need - teachers might want to utilise either the self-study or 'countdown' aspects of the book, or simply dip into it for individual lesson activities to fit in with their own programmes of work.

Modules 39-38
Have something to say/ motivation

Encouraging feelings

I can remember an English teacher of mine telling us about her husband, who was a poet. ‘But he hasn’t written anything for months,’ she explained, ‘ because he’s too happy at the moment.’ That didn’t make much sense to me until I hit the hormonal stormtide of my teens and I was suddenly full of confusion and longing, anger and outrage and the general angst of adolescence. Then the urge to express my emotions was very strong indeed, and it seemed natural to keep (intensely private) diaries and, since I was studying English anyway, to write poetry.

Those early efforts are painful to read now, not because they bring back memories particularly but because they are so bad, which is to say, amateurish and fumbling and overblown. But what they lacked in elegance and style they made up for in strength of feeling and in sincerity. They were my own deeply heartfelt thoughts about the things in my life back then that affected me. They were clumsy but they were sincere.

Now I think that this is important, because it’s all very well teaching pupils about the techniques of writing poetry, but simply putting a theme in front of them and telling them to make a poem about it is likely to produce some pretty lightweight and empty results; empty, that is, of the passion that drives the individual to action. This isn’t to say that the pupils must be intense and driven and in the throes of some overwhelming emotion to write reasonable poetry. These days I write plenty of light stuff just for fun. But if part of our purpose is to raise pupils’ awareness of the power of poetry, then they need to appreciate that authentic writing grows out of emotional ground and that trying to express our feelings through poetry is a wonderfully effective way of dealing with them.

Module 39
Have something to say

Be interested

I can remember when I was a kid at school the teacher put up a picture of some mountains and told us to write a poem about them. I found that really difficult because I wasn’t interested. And because of that I couldn’t think of anything to say, well at least not much. What I actually wrote was:

• Here are some mountains, mighty and tall.
  They just stand about and go nowhere at all.
  Look at these mountains, rocky and grey.
  They look very high. I might climb them one day.

I got 5/10, and the teacher’s comment was ‘Quite good’. I thought she was being very kind.

What I’m trying to explain is that your best poetry will come when you write about something that at least interests you or, even better, something that’s important to you. That’s how it works for me anyway.

Finding a topic

What is important to you? Will you give that some thought and make a few notes? You don’t need to show anyone, because sometimes what’s most important to us is also very private. Lots of things are important to me but I’ll only mention a couple:

• When I was about thirteen a girl in our class got leukaemia, which is a cancer of the blood. Her name was Donna. Despite her treatment and the fact that she fought so very hard, after about six months Donna died of her illness. About a year later I happened to mention Donna during a conversation I was having, and a couple of my friends said ‘Donna who?’. They had already forgotten about her! I thought that was outrageous and terribly sad. Some years later I wrote a poem about Donna so that I at least would never forget her. If you want to read it, it’s at www.routledge.com/professional/9780415477529 and it’s called ‘Donna Didn’t Come Back’.
• Something else that’s important to me is people setting a good example. When I was a schoolteacher I was talking to a pupil’s parents at a parents’ evening. One lady had caught her son swearing and she really yelled at him about it. ‘And I **** well told him that if I **** heard him swearing again I’d knock his **** head off!’ I tried really hard to stop myself from laughing. Another lady grumbled that her daughter wasn’t making much progress at reading. When I asked about this further, it turned out that neither Mum nor her partner had ever read stories to their daughter, or bought her books, or asked her what books she read at school. So what can you expect? Eventually I wrote a poem about this ridiculous idea of ‘do as I say not as I do’. I called it ‘Don’t’ and it’s at www.routledge.com/professional/9780415477529.

Take it further

• You can tell, I hope, that I feel strongly about these things. To explore feelings a bit further hurry over to the next module, Motivation (Module 38) – if you can be bothered.

Module 38
Motivation

Getting motivated

The word motivation means ‘to be moved’. It’s also linked with ‘emotions’, which are our thoughts and feelings. That makes sense to me because, often, strong feelings stir us to action, while giving thought to what’s important generates those powerful emotions.

So as well as asking yourself ‘What is important to me?’, you can think about what creates strong feelings in you, which can form a good topic for a poem. Later in the book, when we look at the various forms that poems can take, you’ll be able to practise creating different kinds of poems, and you might choose feelings as a theme. But if you’d like to explore the idea now, here are a couple of techniques:

• Create a simple list of things that make you feel a certain way. For instance, here are some things that irritate me:

• – people talking loudly on mobile phones
• – charity collectors rattling tins under my nose
• – getting caught out in the rain
• – most adverts on TV
• – restaurant menus written in another language with no English translation
• – weak tea
• – dog poo in the streets (and cat poo come to that!)
• – selfish drivers
• – queue jumpers
• – junk mail.

Note: Because I’m a grumpy old guy this list was originally four pages long, but my wife made me shorten it. What else irritates me? Oh yes, long lists!

Using your thoughts

Now, you’ll notice that I haven’t tried to make my list into a poem. I haven’t tried to shape it or refine it. I just let the ideas come out. I’ve found that not trying to create a poem to start with helps me, because I’m not attempting to do everything at once. I have the basic ideas first and then I can begin to shift them around and form them into the poem I want:

• Another idea is to take a feeling and have ideas about it using a word grid such as the example in Table 2. The idea is to put your chosen feeling into the title of your poem. I’ll use happiness as my example. Then you use a dice to choose words off the grid at random. Roll the dice twice to choose a word. Count the first number from left to right and then the second number upwards. So 3–4 gives us chain, 6–2 gives us princess of the stars and so on. Each word gives you an idea for completing one line of your poem. Here’s my effort:

Table 2

• Happiness is the maker of all things bright (5–1)
• Happiness comes when not all questions need answers (1–4)
• Happiness is the thread that guides me through the labyrinth (4–4)
• Happiness is the castle’s drawbridge let down to welcome me in (1–6)
• Happiness is the path that leads me back to myself (2–4).

Again I wasn’t trying to force the ideas to come, but simply kept my mind focused on how the words in the grid reminded me of happiness. If you’d like to see another example, this time written by Year 5 pupils, go to www.routledge.com/professional/9780415477529.

So use your feelings to motivate yourself to write. Poetry is a great way of expressing how you feel.

Now let’s move on to the next block of modules.

Module 37
Training the senses

A friend of mine once said to me, as we walked around town, ‘Have you noticed there’s a lovely lemony light around today?’ I hadn’t until then, but I’ve never forgotten that simple and evocative description. It sums up the notion of the ‘poetical eye’ wonderfully, which is one that:

• notices fine distinctions and subtle differences;
• sees the unique in the ordinary;
• reflects the individual perspective of the observer.

Benefits of the poetical eye

Being able to appreciate the special in the mundane creates an emotional soil out of which the language of poetry can grow. The Victorian Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins coined the term inscape, which is each created thing’s unique inner landscape, expressed by the very fact of its being or, as Hopkins phrased it, ‘selving – going itself’. One of the achievements of poetry is the expression, once recognised, of ‘what each thing speaks and spells’ – its essential self.

Motivating pupils to write

Once a pupil notices something new or different, he or she immediately has a subject to write about. Also, and importantly, that individual observation gives the pupil ownership of the idea, which leads to increased self-confidence when it comes to talking or writing about it. More generally, refining the senses through active noticing reverses the way that so much in our culture serves to blunt the sensibilities – to desensitise the way we look at and appreciate the world.

Training the senses

Being curious

In a little book I wrote once (called Philosophy Bear and the Big Sky) there was a character named Pinkerton who was a very curious cat. She was curious in the sense that she was nosy and loved to notice things. Pinkerton enjoyed chasing leaves and would always try to catch two together. Then she became very quiet and still, because she was noticing the differences between those two leaves. How many differences between two leaves could you notice, I wonder? Maybe you’ll test yourself and have a go some time today?

Activities: Training your senses

What I’ve called training the senses is all about noticing. If you worked through the module Noticing and questioning (Module 41) you’ll already have met this idea. Now it’s time to take the next step. Try these activities:

• Look around the classroom (or wherever you are) and notice something that’s blue. Now find as many different shades of blue as you can. Try this using a different colour too.
• Advice: Only attempt this if you don’t get easily embarrassed! Find a partner and look into their eyes. Notice as many details as possible about the colour and patterning of their eyes. Now write a short description while they do the same for your eyes.
• Select an ordinary small object – a pencil, a new book, a pot plant. Smell it carefully. What words come to mind that would help to describe that smell?
• Find a peaceful place or ask your teacher to encourage everyone in the class to be quiet for a minute. Listen to the different small sounds that are still going on. No need to do anything else. Just be aware of those little sounds.
• Get two pieces of fruit (they can be the same kind of fruit), so two raspberries for example or blueberries, which work particularly well. Eat one of the fruits slowly and carefully, paying close attention to the flavours in your mouth. Take a drink of water. Now eat the second piece of fruit in the same way. What differences do you notice between them?
• Your teacher and classmates will need...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 44–42 The origins of poetry
• 39–38 Have something to say/motivation
• 17–16 Alliterative phrases/kennings
• 4–3 Blank verse/free verse
• Review
• Looking back at your poem
• Bibliography