Finding Their Own Voices

How do some teachers manage to coax such fresh and accomplished poetry from their students as the two examples here from 11-year-old Natasha Haddock and 9-year-old Catherine Chapman? In an article in BfK’s A Guide to Poetry 0-13 their classroom teacher, John Lynch, described his role as helping young poets ‘utilise the skills they already have, and then to stretch their awareness of language and its potential’. BfK asks him to comment on how he worked with these two young poets.

It is Dark

It is dark
down the cat’s yowling throat,
inside its throbbing brain.
It is dark
when the badger wakens
and sharpens its claws
for the unsuspecting mouse.
It is dark
when I dream of a rattle
and clack of the front door;
the creak, creak of the stairs
and the oil-slicked face
screaming, ‘Wake up! Wake up!’
It is dark
when I hear of factory farming;
of battery hens, and
sows tied to the ground.
Please, someone up there,
you know, the one called God;
turn on the light.
Even the icy moon would do;
the fire of Mar’s temper;
the light at the tip
of my mother’s smile.

Natasha Haddock (aged 11)

The Real Me

I’m not really Catherine Chapman;
the girl who stuffs jelly babies
in her mouth, or makes a mess
with Prawn Cocktail crisps.
I’m not really the one who reads
Disney and Me books,
or the one who runs to her mum
when she’s scared.
I don’t really listen to The Spice Girls
and watch The Teletubbies, or
pick my scabs at playtime.
No, because at night,
I turn into what I really am:
Superwoman.
I look through walls for robbers.
I can walk through walls too.
My muscles stretch for miles.
I lift up houses and
save the world in thirty seconds.
Until mum spoils it all
when she calls me down in the morning
for my Rice Snaps.

Catherine Chapman (aged 9)

Both Natasha and Catherine’s poems, in terms of theme and structure, were very teacher directed. In both cases I used a poem I had written as a model for the children’s own writing. My poems also served as lesson plans: for example, one offered ‘It is dark’ as a repeat line for Natasha, while the other poem suggested ‘I’m not really’ as a way into her own poem for Catherine.

Questions

Natasha’s poem was written as a response to enquiries by me as to where it is dark; what she dreams about; where ‘the light’ might come from. Catherine was asked to deny her own tastes and habits and to describe a fanciful and fantastical image of herself.

Broadening the theme

Natasha produced a powerful poem decrying ‘the dark’. Its power lies in words like ‘yowling’, ‘throbbing’ and ‘oil-slicked’. Too many adjectives can often weaken a poem but here they are part of its strength. Its power also lies in its feeling of desperation and pleading. ‘Mar’s temper’ and the ‘icy moon’ continue the robustness found in the opening cat image but Natasha finishes cleverly with a contrasting mood of tenderness in ‘the tip of my mother’s smile’.

Natasha is sufficiently confident and able to bring in her own personal concerns about nature and our maltreatment of animals – here she is keeping to the theme of ‘dark’ while broadening its definition; equating it with a kind of sadness or sense of injustice.

Mock Seriousness

In ‘The Real Me’ Catherine makes fun of herself by denying her own personal eating, reading and viewing habits. She then contrasts this rather mundane, everyday image with an alternative and more impressive construct of herself involving a fantasy night-life.

The mock seriousness is brought home when the real Catherine is revealed again by mum and the Rice Snaps.

This poem is a rather playful, jokey way of writing about yourself. It avoids the bland listing of favourite things; hobbies and interests. I like the particularity of ‘Prawn Cocktail’, ‘jelly babies’ and ‘scabs’.

Catherine pokes fun at herself while at the same time producing a witty and cohesive work.

John Lynch is a teacher at Tattingstone Primary School, Suffolk.