posted by sooyup
on
Mr Chips
This is me as a (rather drunk) trendy young teacher. I used to love teaching poetry to downtown teenage kids who had been convinced (mainly by teachers) that they didn’t like poetry. I’ve yet to meet a poetry-hating adolescent who did not respond to poems like D.H. Lawrence’s The Snake if some of the vocabulary had been explained beforehand. An even greater delight was convincing so-called less-able kids that they could write poetry themselves. Anyone could, I told them. It was just a matter of choosing a subject, and writing down their thoughts as they came, without worrying about grammar, syntax or spelling. At least they appreciated that freedom from the constraints of their “normal” written work. Then, perhaps with a little help, they could ruthlessly weed out superfluities, and impose a little structure - by choosing line-breaks, changing the order of sentence, etc. They walked all the taller for seeing their work in print - even if it was only in the school Magazine.
This is me as a (rather drunk) trendy young teacher. I used to love teaching poetry to downtown teenage kids who had been convinced (mainly by teachers) that they didn’t like poetry. I’ve yet to meet a poetry-hating adolescent who did not respond to poems like D.H. Lawrence’s The Snake if some of the vocabulary had been explained beforehand. An even greater delight was convincing so-called less-able kids that they could write poetry themselves. Anyone could, I told them. It was just a matter of choosing a subject, and writing down their thoughts as they came, without worrying about grammar, syntax or spelling. At least they appreciated that freedom from the constraints of their “normal” written work. Then, perhaps with a little help, they could ruthlessly weed out superfluities, and impose a little structure - by choosing line-breaks, changing the order of sentence, etc. They walked all the taller for seeing their work in print - even if it was only in the school Magazine.
