Poetry – what do we know?

1. Poetry – what do we know?

2. In your exercise books, at tables, consider all you know about poetry.How many of the terms below can you explain? • Alliteration • Simile • Metaphor • Rhyme • Personification • sibilance • Enjambment • Repetition • Rhythm

3. What is the writer trying to say about poetry in this poem? Choose any line & consider what possible ideas the writer might be trying to bring across? Draw a representation of your idea on the poem. Introduction to Poetry I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore. But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means Billy Collins

4. Personal experience can be an interesting stimulus for poetry and creative writing • Look at another poem. This one was written by a writer called Grace Nichols. She grew up in Guyana, a country in South America, but she now lives in England.

5. I am a Parrot I'm a parrot I live in a cage I'm nearly always In a vex-up rage I squawk I talk I curse I swear I repeat the things I shouldn't hear So don't come near me Or put out your hand because I'll pick you if I can pickyou pickyou if I can I want to be free CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND I'm a parrot I live in a cage I'm nearly always in a vex-up rage I used to fly all light and free in the luscious green forest canopy I'm a parrot I live in a cage I'm nearly always in a vex-up rage I miss the wind against my wing I miss the nut and the fruit picking

6. Take a question each at your tables – try to jot down your thoughts/ annotate around your poem • Who or what seems to be speaking in the poem? • What kind of mood is the parrot in and why? • What picture are we given of his life before he was caged? • How do we know this is a poem? • We know that Grace Nichols wrote this poem. How do you think she feels about the parrot? • Feedback in groups

7. If Grace Nichols wrote about her childhood, what might you expect her to write about? • Whenever I remember the country village along the Guyana coast, where I spent my small-girl days, I can't help seeing water water everywhere. Brown silky water when it rained heavily. Fish swimming into people's yards and children catching them in old baskets. One of the best memories I have of myself is standing up to my calves in the sunlit water, watching the shapes of fish go by and every now and then cupping my own hands underneath and feeling the slippery fish slip through my fingers. My favourite fish was the sunfish. It was a little longer than some of the other fishes, with a fine grey scale on top and a reddish orange glow of a belly below. • But the nice thing about Highdam, that was the name of the village, was that the water in the yards and pastures never stayed on the land for too long because there were these two kokers with big wheels on either side of the village bridge. Workmen would go and turn the wheels, which always made me think of windmills, until bit by bit the water drained away into a canal at the back of the village. Then the hot sun would soon make everything dry and children could run around again playing their cricket and rounders and hopscotch. • Another Highdam thing I remember is sneaking down to the seashore with my sisters and brother to catch crab in the early mornings, just before the last bit of darkness disappeared from the skies. • But you must be wondering what all this has to do with poetry. • Well, my childhood life in that country village plays a big part in my poetry because a lot of my poems are about creatures and back-home happenings. Just as how your own imagination might be stirred by thoughts of winter for example – of crunching through thick powdery snow, tobogganning, making a snow man, maybe curling up in front of fires with a hot drink – so my own imagination is stirred by my childhood. I was awakened by tropical things In groups – firstly, pick out the unfamiliar vocab &try to think of a title for the section of the poem you have been given. Why am I showing you this section of the poem?

8. HomeworkConsider ‘I am a Parrot’ again • If you were an animal what would you be? Why? What qualities do you share with that animal? • Spider diagram your ideas – try to construct one four line stanza/verse based on your animal – for added challenge try to make it rhyme • Example: I am a cat I like to explore I wonder around Sometimes sneaking in next door

9. Which ATL’s have I used today? • Aim to complete 2/3 verses for homework