Our heads bowed in unison. Faces inclined at a reverential angle, we began inspecting these foreign lines for clues, soldiers seconded in some grand, literary hunt.
Though we were teens still at the margins of puberty, we found ourselves grappling with the Masters. Here were poets whose stout, powerful, proper (and very British) names seemed to be the very apex of good writing. Almost all male (and universally deceased), these were writers whose legacies had been firmly encrusted in the canon.
So far as I can recall, our task was to tease their lyrics apart. No, we could never hope to be the next Shakespeare or Keats. Rather, we could dissect their work and find the fibres that held their majestic creations together. We studied verse from afar, like researchers hoping to identify metaphor through a microscope. Try to write like that? What would be the point? Sonnet 130 was some literary Kinder Surprise: crack open the shell and find your prize.
~
Before this year I would not have named myself a poet. Sure, I was an occasional writer who dabbled in poetry. A short piece on demand at most. But I didn't write it, nor even read that much of it. Poetry simply wasn't for me: it was stuffy and restrictive, a distant art reserved for close examination and analysis.
Coming to teach English has changed that. Reading the work of English teachers on writing (Penny Kittle, Judith Rowe Michaels and Tom Romano, to name a few), I encountered new texts, including contemporary poetry and young adult fiction. Here were unfamiliar voices, new styles that seemed to violate the very rules of writing as I knew them. Why had I never seen this at school? Not known the unlimited force of verse? Experienced its magical flight? Seen how language can be manipulated to create infinite new forms?
This was poetry that just might appeal to students, and appeal was what I needed. With memories of practicum still ripe, I was keen to find texts that would connect with teen readers. Very few Year Nines will go in for Kafka or Calvino, and it's the rare (but much appreciated) Year Ten who will relish F. Scott Fitzgerald. Hefty, serious literature would not suffice. Instead, just as young adult literature could help me reach more readers (thank you John Green, A.S. King, Rainbow Rowell et al!), so too might contemporary poetry help sell poetry to a broader audience.
So I was resolved: we would venture outside the well-trod paths.
~
Of course, my own experience of poetry at school extended beyond the classics. But not by much. At regular intervals we studied Australian poetry, though here again it seemed an almost universal prerequisite that the poet be deceased.
We traipsed through poems about the bush, the land, war. A lot of war poems, it seemed. But for the inner-suburban adolescent, the "land of sweeping plains" might as well have been a foreign country. This slow march through poems that we "needed" to know felt disconnected from our reality, our world. For someone who enjoyed reading, this was frustrating; now, years later, I wonder about the non-readers, the struggling readers, wading through the mire.
As a student, you might have been left with the impression that poetry was an historical experiment. Worse, you might have found yourself a casualty of poetry (or reading). What happens to the kids who go AWOL in English, the lost readers?
As a teacher, I was resolved that my students would do more than survive poetry: they would come to revel in it.
~
So we have tried to find delight in poetry, in the little time that is available to us.We read poems aloud to hear their melody. We use them as models, borrow ideas and images. We share our writing, read it aloud, publish it. We name ourselves authors because we are, and we celebrate our authorship.
What does it look like? A fanatical soccer player adapting Michael McFee's "Shooting Baskets at Dusk" to his own favoured pass-time. Reluctant readers connecting with the subtle anger of Wendell Berry's "Questionnaire". Adolescent males cheering along to the explosive roar of slam poetry. Musicians responding with delight when told that yes, they can write rap and song lyrics. Teens expressing themselves in powerful, personal poems with a force and originality that I found stunning.
Though I shouldn't haven been so surprised: these teens are poets by any other name. Publishing in the half-shade, away from the gaze of teachers and parents, they write in their own spaces. While they compose lyrically on Wattpad, or write actual lyrics for fun, they wouldn't necessarily describe themselves as writers. And nor, until this year, did I.
~
National Poetry Writing Month* (NaPoWriMo) is a notionally U.S. event, but one I was enthusiastic for students to take part in. Write one poem each day for a month. Simple! And I tried to sell it to students, I really did, but it seemed I was one of the few takers^.
Maintaining a daily writing habit meant a drastic change in how I wrote, how I thought about writing. Each day required deliberate observation, a quest for a single image or idea that would flow smoothly into verse. Of course, writing is neither so neat nor linear, but forcing myself to publish daily on a blog gave me a deadline to aim for. Rewriting, shaping, cutting lines I loved to make a piece work: all this was real writing. As I reflected on what I was doing, I found it easier to think about teaching writing.
Gradually, teaching changed to reflect my developing understanding of writing. I included more mini-lessons on the art of writing, inspired by other writing teachers but modified to make them my own. Beside this, I modeled more, including writing poetry live and talking through my thinking as I wrote. After writing a short piece, I asked students for help: "what do you think works?", "which image do you like/dislike?" and "what should we change?" With their guidance, we rewrote and improved writing.
Writing conversations changed, too, because I find it easier to focus on the writing as the end goal. From mentoring teens who are more enthusiastic about writing poetry to aiding those who have difficulty finding a start, I can borrow the tools I use and read about to help my students.
Most important, perhaps, has been the idea of an end product. As a poetry blogger, I felt the satisfaction of posting a poem online, the thrill of publication. Wanting my students to feel the same way, we set a class anthology as a goal for the end of Term 2. While initial efforts were more relaxed, students began getting more serious as deadlines loomed: writing lengthened, stories became more elaborate, efforts to proofread gained greater seriousness. At term's end, students held their published writing in their hands, prose and poetry. We could read our work aloud, or even quietly during silent reading time.
Because we are all storytellers, a community of writers.
Blank lines will not
explode, overheat, ignite or
turn against their maker
and if I had one chance
I would tell them that
every poem is a story
every verse an eye-blink
drawn from memory, from life
because poetry – and this -
is for the storytellers.
Ben Symon
Camberwell High School
Footnotes
*I'm eagerly awaiting National Novel Writing Month, though it comes quite late. Hopefully there will be more enthusiasm (and how about verse novels?).
^Okay, I may have been the only taker.