 ‘Baking’ by Phoebe Boswall
With children in the classroom, we often have the tendency to shy away from the topic of death. There will always be one who has recently lost a grandparent, sometimes another who has lost a parent and occasionally one who has lost a sibling. As teachers, our instinct is to tread carefully and not to ‘open up old wounds’. Safer to avoid the issue altogether and stick to something innocuous or jovial. This attitude, whilst understandable, does children a disservice. It places the teacher in the position of protector from reality, when, in fact, our role is better served in helping children to recognise reality and come to terms with it. By resisting the temptation to place a cotton wool barrier between a child and his or her emotions, teachers of poetry can in fact help children to facilitate the process of healthy exploration - as opposed to instinctive repression - of deep-seated feelings. As we have already seen in the example of Charlie’s ‘Dad’, written in response to Simon Armitage’s ‘Not the Furniture Game’, the unforeseeable connection that he was able to make between the source poem and his own personal situation, which he had hitherto refrained from discussing at all at school, resulted not only in stunning poetry but in a happier, more confident child. One of the prime concerns of children for whom life is difficult at home, whether it be due to illness, separation, death or any other reason, is how to handle what those at school do and do not know. Worrying about how friends and teachers will react upon finding out what had previously only been known within the family can weigh heavily upon children’s minds, especially when the full picture is maybe not known to the child. Children may not be fully aware of what their parents have discussed privately or what they have shared with the school, all of which leaves them in a vulnerable position, unsure of what can and cannot be said to whom. The fear of that which they cannot control at home is potentially heightened by the further lack of control over what is known outside of the home. Using poetry that deals with the kind of difficult issues that children are likely to face as the inspiration for writing has the power give them a voice that they can control. They can choose to explore their own thoughts and express them either in a directly autobiographical style, as in Phoebe Boswall’s ‘Baking’, or write more anonymously, wrapping a fiction around the hidden truth as a layer of protection. With the above thoughts in mind, I decided to use ‘Baking’ when I was asked by The Poetry Society to write lesson plans on two of their fifteen Foyle Young Poets winners of 2012. Dealing with death in poetry for children is often seen as too morbid an undertaking, likely to result in writing that drips with too much teenage angst and alienates the reader. Phoebe Boswall’s poem, however, is far from morbid, exuding joy and life that modifies the underlying sadness quite beautifully. I like the vivid sensuality of interlinked images that reproduce the poet’s memory with Proustian precision. The second-person subject of the poem comes to life through each highly focused snapshot and, even though the reader never explicitly sees the full person, we come to know them intimately through the medium of the poet’s own memory. Such is the richness of the description that we can create our own imaginary ‘you’ to fill in the gaps, with our own specific memories substituting those that don’t quite match. For me, my own maternal grandmother seems to be looking back at me from between the lines. It is her striped apron that I can see hanging on the back of the kitchen door, except in blue rather than red. It feels somehow impolite to do this: to invade the poet’s memory and alter things to suit our own. But this is precisely what good poetry always makes the reader do. What’s more, children are particularly adept at doing this. In my experience, given a poem with even the merest glimmer of recognisable common ground, they are capable of riding on the back of poet’s memory in order to re-access their own, as in these examples by Year 8 children: Playing The feel of fur reminds me of you. Old coats, still in the cupboard. Smoke still lingers in the room Toys lay on the table. I always play with them Different trinkets you collected. The helicopterhum shimmers in my mind Times you made me smile, laugh You played with me, played with words. I pick up your lighter, the cold pearlplastic shell, A rainbow of your tricks, your magic, your fun, The tickle against my arms, your cashmere hands. I tried to hold on to them, I grasped them tight But they still slipped away. Your velvety hands. I remember mine fitted around your thumb Safe, wrapped, clasping your fingers. My hands are too big now: they don’t reach anymore. I have to let go of you I have to let go. Betty, aged 12 Eulogy I never knew you well. The childish times Overshadowed by older children. I never cherished those times Never understood their importance. A hug at Christmas, Racing through your frosted firs Shying from the cold. I did that with you sometimes. Ran up and down the staircases Up one, down the other Laughing High on roast pork and new potatoes. When the news came I was eating a mince pie. They told me that you had ‘Gone to a better place’. I wasn’t hungry anymore. Lucy, aged 13 Chacarera Summer afternoons, a vibrant wave in the air. Traffic buzzes outside, and the Buenos Aires humidity is so thick It might as well be honey. All the kitchen windows are open and you Do a mixture of bouncing and dancing to your precious Chacarera, along with your singing. My silly questions, like ‘What is the difference between tango and chacarera?’ You look shocked, then start laughing. ‘Silly boy, you know nothing about folklore’. We laugh, and meanwhile you prepare the pastry. You flounce about, adding onion to mincemeat. You comment on how River beat Boca, triumphantly Boasting about the fifty-first minute goal. Then you remind me that only River fans eat in this household. The empanadas are ready, and you stuff the load of Pastry-covered meat in the oven. The smell hypnotises me. But now I’m here, and not there. Who’s feeding my happiness now? Jacques, aged 12 I found that these young writers responded well to the suggestion that they use the second person to address the subject directly, as in ‘Baking’. It freed them up not to be constrained by what I think of as the third person’s all-seeing eye, which tends to push the writer towards an excess of visual description. Using ‘you’ seemed to enable them to access memories triggered by sound, smell, taste and touch more easily, resulting in poetry which provides a satisfying and truer balance of all the senses. Whilst the children were in the process of drafting these poems, we used ‘Baking’ as the source text for another video adaptation to accompany our 2013 poetry evening. The children recorded each other reciting lines from the poem directly to the camera against a plain white backdrop. They then worked in groups to edit the lines together to make a complete version of the poem. It was interesting to note how this process encouraged them to listen closely to the quality of each recording and to compare this with the visual effect, affording importance to both. From this, they were able to make decisions as to which pieces of footage to include and which ones to reject. The only other imagery that we created all together was a simple photo of an apron hanging on a peg. This image was used to ‘bookend’ the poem. Other than that, the video effects, transitions and sound quality were managed by the children themselves. At the end of the editing process, we watched the various finished films and the children voted for their favourite to be shown at the poetry evening. What impressed me more than anything was the care with which the children had created their montages, paying heed to punctuation and the weight of particular words, ensuring that the poem flowed beautifully, as intended by the poet. They were meticulous about removing overly long pauses and balancing the differences in volume and tone of the numerous recorded voices. This project serves to demonstrate how, if time and resources allow, letting children record and edit poetry can take the understanding of the words and ideas to a whole new level.
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 ‘The Everyday Hymn’ by Clare Carlile
The arrival of the anthology of winning poems from The Poetry Society’s annual Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award always attracts a considerable flurry of excitement amongst our Year 7 and 8 pupils. The competition is open to 11 to 18 year olds throughout the English-speaking world and in recent years, each competition has attracted in excess of 15,000 entries from roughly 7,000 budding poets. This is their main opportunity to showcase their talents and gain public recognition for their own poetry. Over the years, St John’s has had three entrants amongst the 85 highly commended poets, but we have yet to make it into the prestigious anthology of 15 winning poems. There is, therefore, always a particular fascination finding out what makes a winning poem. Alongside the usual platitudes about taking part being more important than winning, I always say to my pupils that, whether judging another writer’s poetry or trying to perfect one’s own, there is, of course, no given formula. Good poems just feel right. They will have something to say to any reader, but that will be something subtly different for each and every one of them. Change as little as a single word and the entire weight, meaning or effect of the poem can be radically altered, either for better or for worse. This is not generally what children want to hear. They feel safe if they know that there is a system that they can use, a way to ensure that they achieve the desired result. My saying to them that I simply don’t know the way to produce the perfect poem - indeed, that I don’t believe that there can possibly be such a thing - amounts to my asking them to take a huge leap of faith. They need to have the courage to write and rewrite until not only they are happy with their words, but they have gone as far as they can towards what they want to say. Their writing then needs a reader and, only if it speaks with similar clarity to that reader as well, will they have succeeded in their aim of writing ‘good’ poetry. As Alan Bennett puts it so memorably in his 2004 play The History Boys: “The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.” Clare Carlile’s ‘The Everyday Hymn’ succeeds in reaching out that hand of recognition to the reader. We all have our own ‘small pleasures’ like those described in the poem, each one simultaneously familiar to anybody and yet utterly personal to us. When we read the poem together in class, the children instantly connected with the idea of finding pleasure in opening a can or cracking an egg. To bring these sensual experiences into even closer focus, we created a video performance of the poem for the Year 8 poetry evening. Interwoven with a montage of the lines recited to camera by numerous voices, we had footage that the children had previously recorded themselves of each other breaking eggs, opening cans and making each other laugh. Simple, inexpensive and quick enough to record, but the effect that the actual doing of the actions had on their subsequent performance of the lines was fascinating to observe. Their fresh memories of the actions somehow allowed them to inject the requisite sensuality into phrases such as ‘hiss/Of hydrogen’, ‘low crunch’ and ‘audible shake’. By actively partaking in the physical experiences described by Clare Carlile, the children had reawoken their senses to these simple acts and it helped them to access the hidden complexity of this deceptively simple poem. For ‘homework’, I asked the children to carry paper and a pencil around with them all weekend. They were to jot down any simple, everyday actions that they (or anyone else) did that gave them a moment of pleasure. There was no need for them to turn the notes into poetry at this stage: basic notes would be sufficient to trigger the memories later on. Lucy, aged 13, came back into school on the Monday with just two things: tying a ribbon and looking at the sky. She was disappointed on discovering that most of her friends had ten or more ideas to share. By limiting herself and showing discrimination, however, she had unwittingly allowed her two ideas to ‘ferment’ and the resulting poem is quite beautiful: Little Things Little things Like the tying of a ribbon The creamy cushioned folds soft against my skin The finishing touch to a gift, a bow in a child’s hair Or cloud watching The baking sun on your back Daydreaming as the daylight melts into the trees Lucy, aged 13 This is certainly one poetry writing activity in which the ‘less is more’ principle applies. Just as Clare Carlile has not distracted herself with the infinite possibilities of her original idea, but has focused instead on the quality of her three basic images, so Lucy has conveyed the full richness of her two ideas with the eye of a true poet. This exercise serves as a prime example of how useful it can be to ‘keep it simple, stupid’ when delving into the limitless world of remembering. Arthur, also aged 13, was more of a reluctant writer than Lucy. He complained that he was stuck and could not think of any ‘small pleasures’ to describe. I encouraged him instead to just think back to something he did last night. It didn’t need to stick in his mind as being particularly enjoyable, just the first thing that came back to his memory. “I didn’t do anything last night,” he grumbled, “except for my homework.” I persisted. Could he recall anything about doing his homework? Did he do it in a different place to where he normally would? Was there anything else going on at the same time? Could he smell anything cooking in the kitchen? “No. It was just normal.” “Did it take more time or less time to do than usual?” “More time. But only because I couldn’t find a pen.” “How did you get hold of one in the end?” “I went and found one in the kitchen drawer.” “Which drawer?” “The third one down.” “Well, there’s your poem,” I said. “The Third Drawer.” “But that’s rubbish, sir. There’s nothing special about a drawer...” Here’s what Arthur then came up with: The Third Drawer I remember the third drawer full of useless things Size six Allen keys Repellent for bees An unused bottle of factor five sun cream A McDonald’s figurine A used box of tissue An old Big Issue A rusty toy tractor Old tickets to X-Factor A light bulb that doesn’t work A baby picture of me with a smirk. Arthur (aged 13) Using the tried and tested listing approach, perhaps recalling encounters in younger years with Kit Wright’s ‘The Magic Box’ or Ian McMillan’s ‘Ten Things Found in a Wizard’s Pocket’, Arthur has stayed true to the simplicity of Carlile’s ‘The Everyday Hymn’ and given the reader a wonderfully clear and touching insight into his own world. The contents of the drawer - whether they were actually present or not - show us something of the inner workings of the young writer’s mind, his frame of reference. His original reluctance to write on this topic, which I suspect has much to do with not wanting to give away too much of his teenage self, has been overcome by diverting the focus onto something seemingly less referential to him personally. The end result, ironically, is all the more personal and revealing. |
AuthorSixteen years of teaching poetry to children have furnished me with a wealth of ideas. Do dip in and adapt any of these for your own lessons. Archives
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