A Soulful Life: Kidlet Poetry

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Create a Poem in 5 easy steps...

By
using your five senses.

So first be very quiet. Listen.... so that you can hear you Poem!

Then go ahead and taste your Poem. What flavour is it?

Smell your Poem! Breath it in...

Touch your Poem

Now look closely at your Poem... What is it telling you?

It's time to create your Poem. Bring it to life!
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Where I'm From

Emmy used a wonderful format from this website to create her poem below... This format helps a child explore how their environment effects the development of their identity.

Where I am From...

I am from music,

from loud and soft

I am from the first sun shine of spring,

I am from the daffodils,

the triumphant.

I am from Christianity and trust,

from lilies and light.

I am from the gentle and loving arms of my mother

from angels watching and love that is everything.

I am from the father and the holy spirit,

the holy water and the cross.

I'm from a sea that crashes against the rocks

and echoes a song in abandoned shells

I am from apples of the orchard and olives of the grove,

of green rolling hills and mountains of red dust.

English winters and Balkan summers.

I am from pilgrims crossing the plains of a new world

settling when the sun finds it's rest,

at the days end.

From the stories of Albanian rivers.

I've been told of my father as a boy,

diving in fresh water as cold as ice but as clean as the side of a diamond.

I am from pictures of my sisters Bujana, Matilda and Seraphina.

pictures of relatives in far of countries.

Everyone of them as special as the other,

They are as much to me as roses seen blossoming in the snow.

(Side note "from lillies and light" is a reference to the meanings of our names, Suzy means lilly and Dritan means light.)

...And here is my attempt at using the same format ...
"Where I'm From" by George Ella Lyons, found here and the template here if you want to make
one, too!

.

I am from broken crockery, terracotta pots, the crackle of plastic wrap on a packet of Balmoral lights

corked bottles of burgundy still fermenting on a Sunday afternoon

I am from the greenhouse, the hen house the duck pond.

I am from the peeling wallpaper and the threadbare carpet.

I am from the primrose and the bluebell woods in early Spring,

the ice cold stream we paddled in and the smell of compost in the back of the car.

I am from Derby day trifectas, each way odds at the Grand National

100 francs on the nose at Long champ.

I am from his Irish temper, her Scottish grit and those French afternoons that leave a pocket book empty, a heart full.

I am from old family stories retold over and over those evenings at the pub and the colourful characters of war time London through the eyes of my mother.

From "don't try to run before you can walk" and the advice of old Mother Terrier who said to her pups that, "in all life's adversity you must keep your tails up."

I am from worn blue white and gold statues of Our Lady surrounded by candlelight during Easter Vigil processions.

His schooldays at the abbey passing down nostlagia for latin chant and evening vespers.

I am from the "Lord is my Shepherd" whispered through tears, her protestant roots

The way Granny prayed for "braid" instead of "bread" in the vowels of her childhood home.

I'm from Shoreham by Sea, with fish and chips, gingham tablecloths and fairground rides on the pier.

I am from Chateau de Peccany, Irish poetry, and mythical German forests where fairy tales are born.

I am from her Sunday roast and suet pudding.

I'm from the tough crusts of a homemade loaf.

I am from the medal he won but never talked about

the pride of my Father as he retold the story of Grandad's quiet courage in the trenches.

"He was at Cambridge when they called him up, never held a gun in his life."

I am from the potting shed where he first asked her to go on a dance with him in exchange for 5 pounds of apples.

And she said yes.

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Making Poetic Leaps...onomatopoeia and A Poem about Happiness

Reading some of Robert Bly's books recently including "Leaping Poetry" has brought into clarity thoughts that have long hovered beneath the surface of my mind yet have not been able to find articulation. I suppose all good writing tends to do that.

It can be said that whenever we undertake the writing of a poem we are in fact making "leaps" between the conscious and unconscious minds. A good poetic line draws secrets from the deep like a free diving pearl fisher.

This means that poetry is able to make free associations between seemingly far flung ideas.
In this place (which the poet Novalis refers to as the seat of the soul) underlying essential truths about our humanity become realised and brought into the crystal waters of clarity.
Memories, dreams, far away hopes, our inner child, fairy tales, ancient stories bound in human history, our connection to the earth and the divine, all return to us through the words of our poetry.

I love teaching poetry to my girls. I'm going to say, right now that I don't teach formal grammar, nor do I ever intend to :) Lucky girls, right (sheepish grin)
I truly believe that grammar can be learned intuitively, when given the chance to explore words through the medium of stories, poems, factual prose, plays and oral narration.
To teach grammar separately creates a fissure between two linguistic worlds that can only be instinctively and internally understood when brought into relation and context with one another.
....Okay grammar rant over lol! I admit, I'm a bit of a romantic when in comes to the written word ;)

The other day Bujana wrote a poem using an object (namely a lemon) to explore how her senses are the tools we use to understand and describe the natural world.
I loved how the words she came up with were so tactile and so qualitatively onomatopoetic. Children just instinctively love onomatopoeia I think of a poem we wrote earlier on in the year together as I began to introduce her to the idea of how sound can resonate within words and ideas....

MUD : Squelchy, squishy, Squashy
WATER: Splashy, sploshy, Washy
AIR : Buzzy, Fuzzy, Shhhhhh
FIRE: Hiss, Crackle, Crinkle
RAIN: Drip, Drop, Tip, Tap
This poem was a lot of fun to make :)

So now I'm slowly bringing her toward more abstract association. Instead of an object (like a lemon) we are going to start to explore a feeling with our senses...

The feeling of the day is HAPPINESS :0)

Here is what Bujana came up with...

HAPPINESS

lOOKS Bright like a fiery sun
SOUNDS like it's laughing
SMELLS like a rose's perfume
TASTES like warm bread I share with my sisters
FEELS hot like a cup of tea warming my hands

I just love the line "HAPPINESS SOUNDS like it's laughing"
It really does!

Next Bujana painted her poem to create a connection *make a leap* between the word sound and visual imagination.

Her painting is at the top of this post.

Although the free association or "leaps" in this kind of purely "sensual" poetry are limited to a point, they are a gentle introduction for small children. They project view, if you like, of the colour and texture of the wide and wonderful poetic landscape.
When Bujana thinks of happiness linked to a taste linked to warmthmemory of bread, of being comfortedsharing with her sisters, leaps are being made!

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Finding your Unique Voice through Poetry

We had a wonderful poetry lesson today.
We studied this poem by John Agard...

Half Caste

Excuse me
standing on one leg
I’m half-caste.

Explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when Picasso
mix red an green
is a half-caste canvas?
explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when light an shadow
mix in de sky
is a half-caste weather?
well in dat case
england weather
nearly always half-caste
in fact some o dem cloud
half-caste till dem overcast
so spiteful dem don’t want de sun pass
ah rass?
explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean tchaikovsky
sit down at dah piano
an mix a black key
wid a white key
is a half-caste symphony?

Explain yuself
wha yu mean
Ah listening to yu wid de keen
half of mih ear
Ah looking at yu wid de keen
half of mih eye
an when I’m introduced to yu
I’m sure you’ll understand
why I offer yu half-a-hand
an when I sleep at night
I close half-a-eye
consequently when I dream
I dream half-a-dream
an when moon begin to glow
I half-caste human being
cast half-a-shadow
but yu must come back tomorrow
wid de whole of yu eye
an de whole of yu ear
an de whole of yu mind.

an I will tell yu
de other half
of my story.

Poetry is a great way of helping a child find their own unique voice. Every poem resonates with the soul voice of the poet who wrote it.

I particularly love this poem!

I want very much for the girls to have the ability to reach beyond their own experiences and see the world from many different perspectives. In this way poetry is a perfect medium for hearing the unique voices of individuals through history.

Poetry is a way of finding those common connections between people from all different backgrounds and points in time, while retaining the singular voice of the writer themselves.

There are so many things in the world that divide, create barriers, differentiate and categorise. The antidote to prejudice, ignorance, stereotyping and division is compassion through understanding another's position and their reason for that position.

I think that art, poetry and music have a wonderful way of being able to do just this.

Especially as homeschoolers and especially as Christians, I want the girls to be able to handle other people's truths. I want them to respect and be genuinely interested in other people who may come from a totally different background to them with completely different ways of understanding the world.

Sometimes, it's in the fearless acceptance of the authenticity of another's experience that we can be able to understand and accept our own.

Part of the reason why I love this poem particularly is that, in it's time, it pushed the barriers of poetic expression. It used a truthful, uncompromising voice blending, indignation, pathos and humor to bring a potent and poignant message to the multicultural table of contemporary life.

It can be hard for kids to be strong enough to find their own voice and use it. Often it can feel as if we are given only a limited number of frameworks to move within. It can seem scary to be true to oneself when that may mean working outside of the "accepted" social, intellectual and religious boundaries of our particular time and space.

When Emmy first tried to recite the poem, I noticed that she put up barriers almost as a reflex against what seemed so foreign, strange and different to her tongue.

I think this is part of what makes this poem so good though. Often when we come across someone of a different ethnicity we put up unconscious barriers. We react with unconscious prejudices.

As we discussed this she began to accept and respect the poem's voice and her recital of it began to involve her own interpretation and with it came understanding and internal integration between her own experiences and the poets.

The girls know only a little of what it means to be different. Their Dad came to England as a refugee. There have been vocal oppositions to the refugee and immigrant communities in recent years. However there is a big difference for them, no one pre-judges them based on the colour of their skin. This was something that made a big impression on Emmy today.

I hope to be able to introduce Emmy to many different poets, artists, writers, filmmakers and thinkers over the next few years. I want her to have a broad understanding of the world. This is one thing I think that home school affords children, an understanding of the real world around them, within a real life context.

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Scrambled Poetry (Create a unique poetic structure)

Bujana has started a Spring book full of Spring themed activites .

This is her Spring Poem.

It was really fun writing this poem.

I asked her to write either a word or a sentance that made her especially think of Spring.

After she had written about a paragraph of bullet points, I cut up the sentances and words and scrambled them.
Bujana then selected random words and sentances from the pile to stick onto a seperate sheet of paper.
This created a really interesting and unique poem structure.