Alice's reflections and poems (I´m pretty sure I'm no Blake!)

Inspiration from sound:

Swansea Bay

Water cascading and flowing
Waves whispering and rolling
Birds swooping and crowing
Close you eyes
Lie in the shallows
and let the Ocean’s might trickle past your palms.


Inspiration from form and structure:

Ode to the wheel

With a roll and a thrust and a tug and a whirl
How much we accomplish with thee
A mere push or a pull or a drive or a ram
How easy you make this is key

Have you ever stepped back yourself
And considered the immense opportunity
That you have provided to all of mankind
Throughout our short history

You have ground and have milled and have moved all around
From a cart to shopping trolley
You have built pyramids and transported my Gran
And for al this we say thanks to thee


Inspiration from imagery: part 3

Black

Black is a hole and is empty space
And represents what we can’t see
Black is cold and deep and cruel
Stretching out to eternity….


Using rhyme to inspire:

My Black Cat

Perfectly playful
Beautifully faithful
Soft and skilful
Purring milkful
Velvet paws
With lethal claws
And that’s my black cat.


Using non-fiction to inspire:

Guantanamo

The three-walled prison is to close.
Finally

The unacknowledged horrors of those interned
Have been known
And ignored

As soon as practicable
And no later than one year from today
The eerie space
And orange suits
Will leave

Allowed to infest new lands.


Inspiration from perspective:

From a mole, being disturbed!

Dig Dig Dig
My boys
As light filtrates our home

Dig Dig Dig
My boys
Deep down dark quiet will be

Dig Dig Dig
My boys
We’ll soon find peace again.


Inspiration from words:

Not a normal weekend!

We spent the afternoon drinking
A home made bottle of wine
So when the pubs were opened
The two of us were fine

We said we’d pop out for a drink
The walk would do us good
John advised us not to go
But he knew damn well we would.


Reflections on poetry teaching and learning:

I found writing on demand really difficult and it took me a while to get into it our class and this morning! I found some of the prompts more inspirational than others… I guess this is a personal thing, but will be interested to see everyone else’s opinions.

I enjoyed the option to personify something and was glad that there were ideas given on the board. If I had had to choose something to personify myself, I think that I would have spent the whole exercise jealous of what everyone else had chosen and wouldn’t have focused on my own work (I am such a child!). I also really enjoyed the option to use non-fiction to inspire a poem. The BBC website easily provided me with the content of my poem and allowed me to express myself politically.

I didn’t tend to enjoy the exercises which required me to write my personal feelings or ideas openly, like writing about a snap shot of your life or taking inspiration from the sounds of a beach and how that makes you feel. I sometimes felt that I did not want to share these feelings and did not want to write cliché poem about lying on the beach (which of course I ended out doing!).

I actually feel that the Ode inspired poem developed poetic skills the best, however, this is probably because the reading about ode’s which was provided. However, even without looking at a group of lessons and activities on ode poems, examples give you the opportunity to practice a particular type of poetic writing and harness your focus.

Some of the poems required too steep an entry into actually writing (e.g. inspiration from rhyme), and others were too gentle (the ode teaching). I think that it is important for a teacher to introduce a writing activity gradually, so that when they write they feel they have a plan to work from. However, it is equally important that the preparing to write a poem, does not turn into writing it. In some activities, you are given the chance to try creating a couple of metaphors/similes and to choice your best one and build. In my opinion, this gives a good start to opening topics and styles before demanding a finished written version.

It is often difficult to re read your work, and even harder to read it out to your class. Teachers need to be sensitive of pupil’s achievements and allow them time to read and alter their work. It may be possible to encourage pair work to improve poems, but pairs need to be carefully chosen, particularly if a pupil is writing about something personal to them.

I think that using visuals is a good way for pupils to create imagery. Even referring to google images can provide some inspiration about a place or time, which the young poet can hold in their imagination.
When I was at school, we often used a thesaurus to experiment with and improve our language. I think that some pupils would benefit greatly to have a thesaurus to help them when redrafting and can also help when working on meter.