Recent Research on Poetry in Education

Below is a summary of some recent research on progress in pupils' poetry writing and teachers' metaphors of poetry writing instruction.

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Lifesaving Poems: John Logan's 'The Picnic'

 

 

If it is possible to identify one poem which acted as a kind of gateway for me into the world of poetry, that poem would probably be John Logan’s ‘The Picnic’. I encoountered it first in an English lesson at school.

 

Our third-form English teacher Mr Borton entered without speaking and with his back to us wrote at the top of the blackboard ‘DO NOT REMOVE BOOKS FROM THIS ROOM’, before turning round, smiling and beginning the lesson.

 

All we had to do was read the poem and then talk about it, but it changed me completely.

 

The poem is a narrative of two adolescent children walking across fields one school lunchtime to eat their packed lunches ‘away from the rest‘. The poem evokes perfectly the ‘soft caving in [the] stomach/as at the top the highest slide’ of giving and receiving a first kiss; and of the physical reactions to unexpected and barely articulated intimacy:

There was a word in my throat

with the feeling and I knew the first time

what it meant and I said, it's beautiful.

Yes, she said, and I felt the sound and word

in my hand join the sound and word in hers

as in one name said, or in one cupped hand.

While the poem did not describe experiences I had actually had, it conjured palpably a world with which I was entirely familiar: that of school, lunch hours, fields, streams, games and a vague but undeniably real sense of longing for ‘something else’, of not wanting to conform, perhaps. 

 

You could say I connected with it.

 

Other important questions about this poem arose during the course of the lesson.  One was to do with the poem’s form, or what I would have then called the way it looked on the page.  Oddly, the poem was laid out in one continuous stanza.  Also, it did not rhyme, nor appear to have any regular rhythm.  Indeed, if anything, it sounded more like someone talking.  These were puzzling for several reasons.  While the ‘poetry’ I had experienced as a young child had largely been oral, I had not been made aware that printed poetry in books could attempt to replicate the rhythms of speech and appear to sound natural.  On one level, therefore, the poem did not conform to my early expectations of what a poem could look or sound like at all: I felt it was more of a story than a poem. 

 

On another level, however, I was more than intrigued because the poem was about experience I knew little about but was keen to discover.  Furthermore, while I felt that the poem was ‘like someone talking to me’ I also knew that lines like those quoted above were not the way that people spoke.  There was a sense that this was language which was both real and artificial at the same time.

 

I now identify these feelings as being to do with the interplay of concepts such as ‘form’ with ‘content’, or, ‘voice and feeling’ with ‘structure’. But at the time I felt a combination of intrigue and puzzlement.  To borrow another phrase from the poem, I now see that the poem enacted ‘talk in another way I wanted to know’.

 

Whenever I read or hear a poem I like for the first time I still feel that same caving as at the top of the highest slide. It is a kind of joyous nervousness. I want the poem to talk to me in a way I know and yet have no knowledge of. I am in the business of wanting to be surprised. I am already falling in love with the words taking shape in my throat and under my breath.  

 

 

 

 

The Picnic

 

 

It is the picnic with Ruth in the spring.

Ruth was third on my list of seven girls

But the first two were gone (Betty) or else

Had someone (Ellen has accepted Doug).

Indian Gully the last day of school;

Girls make the lunches for the boys too.

I wrote a note to Ruth in algebra class

Day before the test. She smiled, and nodded.

We left the cars and walked through the young corn

The shoots green as paint and the leaves like tongues

Trembling. Beyond the fence where we stood

Some wild strawberry flowered by an elm tree

And Jack in the pulpit was olive ripe.

A blackbird fled as I crossed, and showed

A spot of gold or red under its quick wing.

I held the wire for Ruth and watched the whip

Of her long, striped skirt as she followed.

Three freckles blossomed on her thin, white back

Underneath the loop where the blouse buttoned.

We went for our lunch away from the rest,

Stretched in the new grass, our heads close

Over unknown things wrapped up in wax papers.

Ruth tried for the same, I forgot what it was,

And our hands were together. She laughed,

And a breeze caught the edge of her little

Collar and the edge of her brown close hair 

That touched my cheek. I turned my face in-

to the gentle fall. I saw how sweet it smelled.

She didn't move her head or take her hand.

I felt a soft caving in my stomach

As at the top of the highest slide,

When I had been a child, but was not afraid,

And did not know why my eyes moved with wet

As I brushed her cheek with my lips and brushed

Her lips with my own lips. She said to me

Jack, Jack, different than I had ever heard,

Because she wasn't calling me, I think,

Or telling me. She used my name to

Talk in another way I wanted to know.

She laughed again and then she took he hand;

I gave her what we both had touched; can't

Remember what it was, and we ate the lunch.

Afterward we walked in the small, cool creek

Our shoes off, her skirt hitched, and she smiling,

My pants rolled, and then we climbed up the high

Side of Indian Gully and looked

Where we had been, our hands together again.

It was then some bright thing came in my eyes,

Starting at the back of them and flowing

Suddenly through my head and down my arms

And stomach and my bare legs that seemed not

To stop in feet, not to feel the red earth

Of the Gully, as though we hung in a

Touch of birds. There was a word in my throat

With the feeling and I said, It's beautiful.

Yes, she said, and I felt the sound and word

In my hand join the sound and word in hers

As in one name said, or in one cupped hand.

We put back on our shoes and socks and we

Sat in the grass awhile, crosslegged, under

A blowing tree, not saying anything.

And Ruth played with shells she found in the creek,

As I watched. Her small wrist which was so sweet

To me turned by her breast and the shells dropped

Green, white, blue, easily into her lap,

Passing light through themselves. She gave the pale

Shells to me, and got up and touched her hips

With her light hands, and we walked down slowly

To play the school games with the others.

 

 

John Logan from Touchstones 5

 

Lifesaving Poems

 

In search of the ‘Tyger’: power relationships and poetry in the classroom

 

When I began teaching the Year 5 class of children whose work would form the basis of my doctoral study of teaching poetry writing I did not really know what I was doing. (This was in an ‘ordinary’ community primary school in a not particularly salubrious area, and with no strong tradition of poetry teaching). I had a strong hunch, nothing more, that engaging the children in reading, writing and performing poems would somehow be of benefit to them. I think I had the grand idea that I would somehow find a link between ‘improved literacy’ and writing poems. But I was confident that if I read them poems and asked them to talk about them we might have the basis of a conversation which could be transformational. This was not a research finding, it was a hunch; and I was so serious in my belief in it that I spent the next three years investigating it.

 

I was influenced in my first sessions with the class by something Wendy Cope once told me about her teaching. After reading a poem to a class she would deliberately restrict herself to one question about the poem, and then let discussion about the poem emerge from there. She also tried never to use the same question twice.

 

On my second visit to the class I decided to read them, among other poems, William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’. I imagined that they would not understand all of it, that they might even find it a bit strange or difficult, but I was convinced they would respond to it. What happened that afternoon changed my whole view of teaching, and teaching literature in particular.

 

After reading ‘The Tyger’ to the class I chose to ask what pictures went through their minds as I was reading the poem. After a few slightly predictable answers about forests and tigers one boy put up his hand and said this: ‘I think it is about a big forest and a little forest. The little forest is trapped inside the big forest and is struggling to escape from it. It is a real struggle. Eventually the little forest breaks free and makes its way to edge of the big forest. It looks out.  What it can see on the other side is the First World War.’ There was a silence. Nobody knew what to say next. I thanked the boy for his comment and said that I found it interesting. Then I did something I had not done consciously in my teaching before. Instead of saying what I wanted to say, which was to debate with the boy’s interpretation of the poem, or read another poem perhaps, I asked the class if the boy’s answer had made anyone else think about the poem differently. All of their hands went up. Then I did something else I had not done before: I allowed the children to take control of the discussion. Instead of their comments going through me ‘in the chair’ they began talking and responding to each other, not always in agreement, but with a new energy and purpose.

 

I thought about this story again at the third Poetry Matters Seminar Series in Leicester in September. During a discussion of a paper by Gary Snapper Michael Rosen encouraged us to reflect on the power relationships at work in the English teaching classroom. It was impossible, he said, to ignore them. Drawing on the work of Foucault, he invited us to consider the connection between the questions we ask in classrooms and the imperative of exams and ‘standards’ and thus policy. Placing poetry in this equation is by definition a disruptive act, he reminded us, because poetry is a democratic and subjective art-form. Sue Dymoke added that taking this kind of risk requires confidence, both in terms of subject and pedagogical knowledge.

 

Together we considered the paradox of ‘losing’ power in order to gain new kinds of knowledge and confidence by asking questions about poems we do not know the answers to. As Sue Horner remarked later at the Seminar, it is possible to move too speedily from curriculum specifications to decisions about classroom practices without taking the time to engender the trust and the fun and the risk which we know teaching poetry can bring. We can catch glimpses of the Tyger, but these will not be memorable or long-lasting if we go hunting for it using only pre-planned routes.

Lifesaving Poems: Ann Gray's 'mercifully ordain that we may become aged together'

Ann Gray and I were chatting the other day. We were trying to decide how long we had known each other. Ann thought we met at the launch of The New Exeter Book of Riddles. I thought it was at Exeter Phoenix, at Uncut Poets, the open mic night Ann founded in the late Nineties.

How long was it, we wondered, ten years, longer? Neither of us knew. 

In any case, it does not really matter, as it doesn't when you are in the company of someone you trust. This is important because when I come across Ann's poems, in the Guardian, say, or the Rialto, it takes less time for me to find the wavelength of the poem in question. If you do not know her work I urge you to check out her last two books in particular, both published by Headland Books.

I first came across 'mercifully ordain that we may become aged together' in the Rialto. It is taken from Ann's most recent collection, At the Gate, and shares what I think of as that book's central preoccupation: how can we live with attention to those we love the most.

The poem is spoken in an easy-going demotic which belies its cleverness. It flirts with becoming a well-behaved sonnet, then veers off at the fifth line, as if it has more important business in mind. 

All that happens is a man helping his wife into her coat in a coffee shop. There is no extra commentary. There is nothing complicated about the diction or the scene it describes. Yet I find it completely harrowing.

The more I read the poem the more convinced I am that the poem achieves its power in the gap between the unfulfilled promise of its title and the expression of everyday love which is described. The key to this is the 'c'/'ck' sounds in the middle of the poem, contained in the words 'jink', 'hoick', 'neck' and 'tucked'. These are like breath catching in the throat, as at the start of tears. Everything either side of them is smooth, in phrasing which chimes in pairs of words: 'shoulders'/'shopping', 'feet'/'freed', 'helping'/'held'. This is re-emphasised in the repeated 'He must have/done this for years, this exact same thing for years.'

The entrance and exit of the poem's speaker are also paired in the details they contain (the latte and the white chocolate chip muffin). But the speaker leaves the poem (and the Canadian Muffin Company) as she enters it, alone.  

 

mercifully ordain that we may become aged together

Tobit 8.7

 

I was in the Canadian Muffin Company in Armada Way,

 waiting for an extra large latte, cinnamon and chocolate

and a white chocolate chip muffin, to take away,

when I saw them. He was helping her get into her coat.

He held it out for her as if the sleeves were winged

while she gracefully turned her back to shrug it on.

At this point he did a little jink, more of an imperceptible

hoick, on the balls of his feet, so the coat lifted

neatly over her shoulders and tucked under her neck,

then he freed her hair from the collar. He must have

done this for years, this exact same thing for years.

I watched him pick up the shopping, she picked up

her bag, and I collected my latte and my white

chocolate chip muffin and walked out into the rain.

 

Ann Gray, from At The Gate (Headland Books, 2008)

 

 

 

 

 

Lifesaving Poems: WN Herbert's 'The Black Wet'

In 2002 I heard WN Herbert read 'The Black Wet' at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. This is not remarkable in itself, you might say, and perhaps you would be right. The truly remarkable thing about Bill's reading is that I can still see and hear him delivering it, nine years later. For someone with the attention span of a gnat, this is unusual.

It was a beautifully paced reading, with proper peaks and troughs, moments of slapstick comedy followed by lyrical grace; towering rage follwed by barehanded grief.

For me the stand-out moment was Bill's reading of the poem below, 'The Black Wet'. It came to mind again this week as I watched and listened to the Devon skies doing what they love best.

With Bill's performance still fresh in my mind's eye, I am reminded that on hearing it I spent most of the time laughing. 'How does he do that?' I remember thinking, as the poem swirled around us and gathered unstoppable momentum, seemingly bringing everything in the world into its unique force-field of upside down logic.

I see this poem as a kind of chant or spell, the better with which to curse and/or bless the generosity of the heavens. It is always a good day when you can mutter under your breath 'It's raining Bala, Baikal, and balalaikas,/it's raining soggysidewinders and sadder adders'. I love the love of wordplay at the heart of this poem's enterprise. The energy it generates reminds me of those music hall entertainers spinning plates.

Nine years later everything is still in the air. Nothing has come crashing to earth yet.

The Black Wet

It's raining stair-rods and chairlegs, 
it's raining candelabra and microwaves, 
it's raining eyesockets. 
When the sun shines through the shower 
it's raining the hair of Sif, 
each strand of which is real gold 
(carat unknown).

It's raining jellyfish, 
it's raining nuts, bolts and pineal glands, 
it's raining a legion of fly noyades, 
it's raining marsupials and echnidae, 
it's raining anoraks in profusion. 
It's siling, it's spittering, it's stotting, it's teeming, 
it's pouring, it's snoring, it's plaining, it's Spaining.

People look up, open their mouths momentarily, 
and drown. 
People look out of windows and say, 
"Send it down, David." 
Australians remark, "Huey's missing the bowl." 
Americans reply, "Huey, Dewie and Louie 
are missing the bowl."

It is not merely raining, 
it's Windering and Thirling, it's Buttering down. 
It's raining lakes, it's raining grass-snakes, 
it's raining Bala, Baikal, and balalaikas, 
it's raining soggy sidewinders and sadder adders. 
It's raining flu bugs, Toby jugs and hearth-rugs, 
it's raining vanity.

The sky is one vast water-clock 
and it's raining seconds, it's raining years: 
already you have spent more of your life looking at the rain 
than you have sleeping, cooking, shopping and making love. 
It's raining fusilli and capeletti, 
it's raining mariners and albatrosses, 
it's raining iambic pentameters.

Let's take a rain-check: 
it's raining houndstooth and pinstripe, 
it's raining tweed. This is the tartan of McRain. 
This is the best test of the wettest west: 
it is not raining locusts - just. 
Why rain pests 
when you can rain driving tests?

It is raining through the holes in God's string vest. 
 

Note 
The black wet (Scots) - rain as opposed to snow

from New Blood (ed. Neil Astley), Bloodaxe Books (1999)

 

The Write Team: Creative Writers in School -from Bath Festivals

via youtube.com

I used to be the one sitting quiet in the corner and now I am not afraid to speak up.

My Hero: Michael Laskey

Photo: Derek Adams

Some writers influence you through the pull of their imagination on your work, opening up new worlds as you read them. As I wrote recently, Ted Hughes is an example of this for me. Other writers come in and out of your life through firendship and collaboration. Michael Laskey is my hero because on top of these influences he also rescued me.

Towards the end of 1998 Michael rang me to invite me to consider coming to Suffolk to work as the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Spring Poet in Residence. he described a two-week programme of visiting schools, colleges and community groups where I would encourage children, teachers and writers with their poetry writing. It was a fantastic opportunity. Like an idiot, I turned him down. I explained that the PhD I had embarked on was very time-consuming. For good measure I also threw in an excuse concerning my worries about childcare.

Michael listened to me patiently, and finally put the phone down accepting what I had told him.

I think the real reason I said no to Michael was my complete lack of confidence at the time. My first book, published in 1996, had done very well for a first volume of poems, selling out its print run within a year. My publisher, however, was reluctant to commit to another print run, and interest in the book stalled.

The gap between acceptance and publication of the manuscript for the book had been three years. In the intervening period I had begun writing new poems, but was not sure if they amounted to enough material for a new book let alone whether they were any good.

When it became clear, early in 1998, that no new print run would be forthcoming, I began to wonder if these new poems might ever see the light of day in book form.

I had met Michael once before, at a reading for Smiths Knoll at the Troubadour Coffee House. I liked him immediately, quickly learning to relish both his enthusiasm, and his disdain for what he called 'showy' behaviour. I knew I was letting him down by saying no to his kind offer, which I had not asked for, but genuinely felt I had no option to say anything else.

My wife came home later that evening and confirmed that I was indeed an idiot for turning him down. I rang him back and was relieved to find he had not offered the residency to anyone else. I would be delighted to come to Suffolk, I told him. By now thanking him profusely, he stopped me, saying, 'Of course with your book now out of, we'll have to put some new poems out. Do you have any new work I could see?'

I asked him what he meant. 'Well, you know, a pamphlet or something. We can't have our poet in residence giving readings with no book to sell.' Excited and still not catching up with him I asked him what he meant again. Ever gracious, he explained in words a child would understand. 'What you need to do, Anthony, is send me some new work, your best stuff mind you, and then we'll print a pamphlet for you with some of your older work that's now out of print so that people can see a range of what you've been up to. How does that sound?'

I told him this sounded brilliant, and began thanking him profusely all over again, at which point he told me to shut up and stop being so silly, it was his pleasure and they were really looking forward to working with me.

And that is what happened. I went to Suffolk, working in schools and with writers groups, and I gave readings from my brand new pamphlet which we decided to call The Difference. 

I can still see Michael now, pounding the steering wheel with pleasure on the way to some tiny village school in the middle of nowhere, then attacking it when some opera came on. Once, in a traffic jam somewhere outside Sudbury, he saw two children, a girl and her younger sister, shouting at each other. 'Look at that, Anthony, that's 'Kin' by CK Williams, do you know it?' I told him I did not. 'Oh, Anthony, you must, what do mean you don't, you should, you know, God, really? It's the one that goes 'Next the wretched history of the world'.'

Even now he is probably turning to a newly-arrived poet in his car, handing them a book of poems and saying 'You really should read this, you know, it's bloody brilliant, what on earth were England thinking of in the rugby?'

 

The Difference

for Jim

 

The lives we're living,

what difference do they make?

 

We wake up,

throw our children in the air

and catch them laughing

into our arms.

 

Friends come and go, seasons pass,

the leaves collect silently

in the garden.

 

Which reminds me,

there's pruning to be done

and bonfires to build.

 

What is it that we're doing

in this world to make it better,

a place more easy to wake in

for our children?

 

In the middle of all this

I am amazed

the sun still finds time

to rise beautifully over these roofs

and never asks anything in return.

 

My Hero: Michael Laskey

Photo: Derek Adams

My Hero: Michael Laskey

Photo: Derek Adams