 ‘What Is the Pond Doing?’ by Diana Hendry I first came across Diana Hendry’s ‘What Is the Pond Doing?’ when browsing for ideas to use on National Poetry Day 2013. The theme that year was ‘Water’ and this poem was featured on the Scottish Poetry Library’s website. This is one of my favourite online resources and I can strongly recommend it to anybody teaching or studying poetry at any level. What struck me about this poem as a means for getting children writing is the ease with which it moves from the question of the title through the various ‘answers’, each of which begins with a present participle verb: ‘Wobbling...Being...Sending...’ etc. Each image stands independently of the next, allowing the imagination of the young reader to taste a metaphorical smörgåsbord of the poet’s various ideas, think about each one separately and start to come up with their own possible answers. Finally, the poem returns neatly to its original question and gives the beautifully simple summary: ‘Ponding. Responding.’ Turning the noun ‘pond’ into a verb cleverly encapsulates the idea of an inanimate object having a tangible essence or ‘thereness’, which in turn, gives it life. Children enjoy the game of bringing objects to life through word play of this type and I wanted to give them the opportunity to see how it can be done simply but effectively, as in Hendry’s poem. By way of introducing the idea to a group of Year 4 children, I didn’t start with the poem at all, but rather, I displayed an assortment of images and video clips of ponds and just asked them the question: “What is the pond doing?” The first image was of a totally still pond, for which the initial collective response came back as: “Nothing! It’s a pond. It’s not alive. It can’t do anything!” However, once we had moved on to looking at raindrops falling, leaves gathering, breezes rippling, clouds reflecting and so on, it wasn’t long until the children were spontaneously raising their hands and vocalising close equivalents to the phrases within the poem, complete with similes, onomatopoeia, personification, alliteration - you name it - before having even seen the text itself. If ever there is evidence of children possessing an inner poetic sense, then this is it. We then looked at the poem together and the “But, I said that!”s came thick and fast. When children are able to see for themselves that they can ‘do’ poetry as easily as this, without the hard graft of ‘writing’ in its traditional sense, it can be a genuine epiphany and any barriers that may previously have been blocking their way to self-expression are swiftly removed. Here are two responses from Year 4 children: What is the Sea Doing? Spitting like a shower-head in a shower Answering back at the sky Swords in hands stabbing the rocks Tsunami waves tumbling on the islands Asking the fish, should I battle the sand? Sparkling like the glistening moon Punching the fishing boats that steal the fish Sinking blinking for ever. Alfie, aged 8 What is the Sea Doing? Telling a little starfish: do you want a ride? Suddenly it gets angry and swashes the little starfish away Roaring the sea in the sky And then goes back down and sways Emotion commotion for ever. Lewis, aged 8 I particularly like these two examples for their raw energy. The writers have really latched onto the possibilities inherent in their choice of verbs, using them simultaneously as springboards for effective personification and onomatopoeia - ‘spitting, ‘stabbing’, ‘punching’, ‘sinking’, ‘blinking’, ‘telling’, ‘swashes’, ‘roaring’, ‘sways’. There seems to be something of a cathartic effect going on here too. Who knows what particular frustrations these two boys may have had prior to their starting this activity, but as an outlet for emotions seeking expression, the act of writing verse, it would appear, has provided a release of some sort. I am taken back to a lesson from the previous year, in which I worked with Year 1 children on their ‘Oceans’ topic, one of whom responded like this: The Sea The sea is rough when it hits the rocks It goes mad like lightning He is so angry that he tries to drown me I run as fast as I can The sea is so angry he bursts out of his vest When it comes to night he looks up and cries with happiness He bursts into a furious ball going mad All he really wants is for someone to teach him how to behave. Fred, aged 6 (not his real name) Not being a regular teacher of this year group, I had not come across Fred before and I cannot say anything of typical demeanour within the classroom. I am told that he is a child who struggles with emotions and impulsivity. I witnessed no such difficulties in this particular lesson and, if I hadn’t been subsequently informed of Fred’s history, I would not have considered him as anything but bright and enthusiastic learner with an urge to impress. Perhaps something within the theme had inspired him; perhaps it was the direct creative engagement. Whatever it was, he has arguably revealed something of his inner turmoil and successfully put into words that which, for a six-year-old, would otherwise be difficult, or even impossible, to express. Such is the potential power of poetry on the young mind, not only as a reader, but, perhaps also and more significantly, as a writer. In the week or so following the original lesson with Year 4, I also used ‘What is the Pond Doing?’ with classes of Year 5 and Year 7 children. Here are a handful of my personal favourites from these sessions: What is the Flood Doing? Rosebudding on the land Flowering spreading its petals wide Eating through buildings Leaking from the sea Overpowering the army Great waves working as one Like treacle Like mud from a golden cup Ellie, aged 9 What is the Puddle Doing? Troubling a passer-by with an unwelcome reflection Luddling in children to splash around Wishitcouldbeing A roaring river eternallyflowing Cryingdirtytearing Bubbling up into the blue Trickling back down into a differentditching Wondering what is beyond the horizon Puzzling and distorted pictures floating Staringbacking with a similar face Fillingopentrainersing Chuckling along with everybodyelseing Coldingandcuddling in the winter months Donning sunglasses in the shining sun Mouthwatering at the sight of fooding Solesoftheshoesing Disappearing into the dark Puddling. Huddling. Daniel, aged 11 What is The Snow Doing? Floating like a lily pad on stilled waters, Layering like hay in a bale, Being a playmate for the wind A lonely ice floe, Drifting on the glowing sea, Blowing growing flowing sewing Snowing, lowing, downbelowing. Beaty, aged 11 What is the Sea Doing? Barrelling like Gloucestershire cheese going down a hill Hoteling a billion trillion fish Drowning the occasional human Blueing up the coastline Gazing at the bright yellow beach Smashing up the rocks Sucking in sailing boats Mocking the shipwrecks on the sea bed. Jake, aged 12 What is the Sea Doing? Drinking every fish that swims in it Thinking about when the sky is raining Wishing overall to be famous Keying to a secret door at the deep of the sea Skiing down the mountain waves Freeing Being Seaing Emma, aged 11 Something that I found especially interesting about repeating this activity with children of different ages was the way in which their desire to be experimental with language appeared to increase as they got older. We often tend to think that younger children are more alive to ‘nonsense’ words, hence the prevalence of works such as Carroll’s ‘The Jabberwocky’ within the children’s poetry canon. In fact, inventing words to fit with a particular pattern, rhyme or sound effect is a surprisingly sophisticated skill, which requires a certain level of confidence to master. Children need to understand, if they embark upon coining new words within their poems, both why they are doing so and what effect they are aiming to achieve. Just as Carroll’s masterful portmanteau words such as ‘slithy’ create just enough of a semantic or lexical association - ‘slimy’, ‘lithe’, ‘writhing’, ‘shiny’ etc. - to suggest a possible meaning whilst obscuring a precise one, children will be most successful in this endeavour when their subject matter is very clear in their mind and they put real time and effort into dismantling and assembling their words in much the same way as one might do with a set of Lego bricks. Daniel’s ‘luddling’ is a particularly pleasing invention, seeming to conflate the idea of ‘luring into a puddle’ into a single word. This careful crafting illustrates the extent to which such words are far from ‘nonsensical’; indeed, in certain cases, they carry more poetic weight than a comparable ‘real’ word might do. Playful creations - such as Daniel’s ‘wishitcouldbeing’ and ‘solesoftheshoesing’, Beaty’s ‘downbelowing’, Jake’s ‘hoteling’ and ‘blueing’ - help to animate images by turning other parts of speech into verbs. Finally, when the children attempt to echo Hendry’s memorable ‘ponding/responding’, we get some lovely results such as Emma’s ‘keying.../skiing.../freeing/being/seaing’. Emma’s poem is especially notable for the fact that she wrote it just six months after her arrival in the UK from her native Norway, having never spoken any English prior to her arrival. Still getting to grips with her English grammar, spelling and syntax, she was not by any means a confident reader, speaker or writer of English at this time. Being permitted to use words without the restraining influence of strict meanings and usage allowed her to express her thoughts freely and to find ways of making newly discovered words work for her and thereby gain increasing resonance. (Who knows if Norwegian has an equivalent punning possibility to ‘seeing/seaing’, but Emma has discovered it in English and this can only serve to enrich her ability to use language creatively in the future.)
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 A place
What is a place? A space Or something special. The Nobel prize would say Molecules of air Atoms of oxygen. But that is a space. Maybe a place has to be lived in: A nest filled with blue eggs Or a lake of filigree dragonflies. Maybe emotion can live there In a baby’s cot Or a graveyard of red poppies. Maybe it is inside your head, A retreat, A place where you feel safe. But whatever a place is Where is it? Anna, aged 12 Some of the poetry which endures the most in the collective public imagination is that which evokes a sense of place. But, as Anna’s poem above reveals, a place is not quite so fixed and definable as we might at first think. Consider for how many people the word ‘Adlestrop’ would be entirely meaningless but for Edward Thomas’ sixteen simple lines: ‘Adlestrop’ by Edward Thomas Yes. I remember Adlestrop-- The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop—only the name And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky. And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. from Poems (1917) The number of people who have actually been there, when compared to the number who know it only through the poem, must be tiny, and yet, when we do read the poem, we do ‘recognise’ it. Not literally, of course, for the majority of us, but as an experience of place. We have all been to places that resonate with us, through connection to distant memories, through a curious sense of déjà vu, through a sense of emotional belonging or through the deliciousness of the new. Children are no exception, and whilst their range of experience of different places will inevitably be less than that of most adults, their ability to convey a sense of place, either through memory or imagination, can help to create real poetic power. Year 1 pupils at St John’s recently visited the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. To complement their classroom studies of Antarctica, they also worked with me to come up with their own poetic responses to the topic. Although they were in the early stages of learning to write, this certainly did not hold them back, and given the means to express their ideas figuratively and a structure on which to hang their words, they were soon able to work individually, in groups or with adult assistance to produce some great poetry. We started not by looking at words at all, but by listening a sound clip of an Antarctic storm, with the children trying to guess what they were hearing and to describe it in interesting ways, but without my telling them what exactly they were hearing. Some of them thought it was indeed Antarctica, but some suggested that it might be the ocean, whilst others thought it might be a very noisy motorway. When ideas like these were suggested, I made a note of them on the board and we discussed them in closer detail. What particular things did they hear that made them think of these places? Without having to tell them to do so, they were launching straight into the use similes and personification, e.g. “I can hear screaming tyres”, “The waves are roaring like an angry lion”, “I can hear a pack of wolves howling because of the cold” etc. By allowing this open-ended guessing-game approach at the start, the seeds were sown for a broad range of images and points of comparison. Had the lesson started with “We are going to listen to a clip of Antarctica”, this would almost certainly have narrowed the children’s thinking down to preconceived, literal ideas of ‘what Antarctica is like’. Instead, the aim was to keep the children’s mind open to all possible imaginative connections, to let them see that, yes, that does sound like an ocean and, yes, that could be a motorway. We then watched a video of the same clip, and this time focused on the visual aspect. Although the cat was now out of the bag in terms of what topic we were dealing with, it was interesting to note that just having those few moments of thinking about the sounds of motorways, oceans, jungles, hurricanes, mountains, or whatever had gone through each individual child’s mind, now allowed them to feel free to do a similar thing with what they could see. Numerous suggestions were forthcoming, for example, about how the snow being carried horizontally in the gale looked “like the white hair of an old witch”, “fierce waves” or “big white sharks’ teeth”. This ability to make sophisticated figurative comparisons seems to come naturally to children this young if done in as a group and in a spoken context and I was impressed to see how many of the ideas they had come up with in these early stages of the hour-long lesson were retained right through to the final stages once they got down to the business of writing. Certainly it had helped them to have audiovisual stimuli; in addition to the video clip, I put together my own simple Antarctica poem in the form of a slideshow juxtaposed with engaging images, that the children recited back slide by slide as I read it to them: The Ice King You may not have noticed me, Minding my own business Down here At the bottom of the Earth Like a speech bubble stuffed With snowy silence… Ignore me at your peril! I can impale you on my ivory tusk. In my cold, clutching claws I can snatch the sneaky, summer sun And stop him from slinking away. Or I banish him north for many a month And just keep my maiden, The milky moon, for company. And make her green fairies dance In the garden of my mind. I send out my warriors to scour the sea, In defence of my kingdom, Each one a bullet in search of a target. While my strange ballerinas swirl their skirts in the darkness, Trapped behind glass until I set them free. I'll drop not one tear of pity On my wind-parched valleys, However loud they may howl. And with the fire in my belly I'll cough flames from deep down To torment the terrified air. I could chew you to pieces With my tyrannosaur teeth. Or rip you to ribbons In one roar from my thundering throat. Rivers stand still at my command And cower as they gaze up At my glittering crown. Yes, down here, I am king. Ignore me at your peril... One of these days I might be coming to get you... Splitting a poem up in this way makes it so much more ‘digestible’ for younger children and they can take the time to pause, think and discuss each idea before moving on to the next one. Incidentally, I cannot recommend strongly enough having a go at writing for your pupils as a means of motivating them. If writing a whole poem seems daunting, just a line or two will help both to get the idea across to the children and will inspire them to emulate your example. It doesn’t have to be worthy of the T S Eliot prize. Just showing them that writing can be fun, that you enjoy it and that having a go is more important than ‘getting it right’ should be enough to give even the youngest learners the confidence to get writing in groups or independently. As Nicholas Guinn says in his chapter of Making Poetry Happen: “It is [...] important - for many pedagogical and ideological reasons - that teachers should write, and share what they write with their students (Andrews, 2008; Ings, 2009; OFSTED, 2009). [...] Sharing one’s own poetry with students can also help to demystify what might otherwise seem to be an arcane process and - perhaps most important of all - reintroduce into the classroom the words which Philip Pullman (2003) felt were missing from early Literacy Strategy documents: fun and enjoyment” I always feel a creeping sense of embarrassment when sharing my writing with children, if only that I know that I prefer the honesty and freshness of their writing, untainted as it is by self-doubt and self-criticism. However, as soon as I remind myself that I am sharing it not for its inherent quality as poetry, but rather to help others to learn, to emulate and to aspire, I realise that my moment of self-consciousness is worth the fleeting pain, particularly when it helps to get children writing like this: Antarctica Antarctica is a sword cracking through the ice Antarctica’s crown is mountains Hard like a diamond Antarctica can rip you apart Icebergs are crashing Antarctica eats big ships It stops the sun going down. Olivia, Jesse, William, Tabitha, Edmund, Archie (aged 5) Antarctica Antarctica is a snow queen wearing an icy crown She has a sparkly dress Silky cold skin Snow bright like the shining sun. Isla (aged 5) Notice how the use of simile, metaphor and personification has come naturally to these children, more so than it does to me. Onomatopoeia (e.g. ‘cracking’ and ‘crashing’), alliteration (e.g. ‘...sparkly...Silky cold skin/Snow…) and even assonance (e.g. ‘rip’... ‘big ships’) are all similarly in evidence. Whilst they may not fully understand or appreciate it, here is evidence that very young children do possess an innate sense of the music that exists within words and they are able to make clever choices in order to achieve effects that resonate with the listener/reader. ‘Polar’ by Gillian Clarke When we look at poetry by older children, it is hardly surprising that this natural affinity for language which has been with them for so long is able to produce some startling work, provided the appropriate skills have been exercised and honed in the interim. By way of example, Year 7 children at St John’s had the opportunity to visit the Scott Polar Research Institute for a poetry workshop with poet-in-residence Kaddy Benyon and me not long after the Year 1 children had paid their visit. They explored the museum, handled exhibits, found out about their origins and how they came to be here in this place. They then chose one particular exhibit and, inspired by Gillian Clarke’s childhood recollection of a polar bear skin rug, their task was to tell the story of the exhibit in the form of a poem. During their writing session at the museum, they took notes and made a start on structuring their ideas, but they were then given three or four weeks in which to revisit, edit and complete their poems, allowing them to develop slowly and ‘organically’. They shared electronic versions with me and the rest of the class throughout the process; that way, we were all able to make suggestions, ask questions and offer encouragement and criticism in order to help the work to improve. Here are some of the finished results: The Airship “Norge” When the airship ‘Norge’ made its expedition to the North Pole in 1926, the local Inuit were baffled, having never seen anything like it before. Some even thought that it was a god… The new king glides over his domain, Ready to rule, Ready to lead. His giant cetacean head acknowledges his newest subjects, And recognises their flaws, Their dreams, Their fears, Their hope. Engine, Check. Flight Course, Check. Balloon intact, Check. Discreetness, Negative. Nation? Inuit, Canadian, Advanced? Negative. Threats? Negative, sir. After the God has seen his loyal peasants, He moves on, Satisfied with his impression, He decides to move on, See the tribes to the east, The west, The north, Maybe even the south, Where the men wear black seals, And the women wear snowflakes. Change course. Yes, sir. Where to, sir? East. Co-ordinates, sir? As soon as we find civilization... There is civilization here, sir. Modern civilization! Yes, sir. Now the God has gone, No more of him is seen. Shamans say they talk to him. His voice is low, Deep, Like the icy waters, In which his lower forms swim. They call to him, Offer water to him, Offer meat to him, Offer praise to him. George (aged 12) Slippers They hold and comfort the weary and they disagree with the cold. Even though the caribou is dead life still floods through them. Grandpa adores them with all his heart, But I would prefer the caribou alive, Running free and bounding in the snow Instead of silencing his sorrow. I remember touching his nose that felt like rough honeycomb And as I watched him playing I thought I heard him laugh. The scarlet felt that lines the slippers Reminds me of the scarlet blood that stained the snow And my Grandfather’s continuous snore Reminds me of the caribou’s soft grunts And I only now begin to realise that the caribou is still with me Reflected in my own eyes. Mia (aged 12) Letter An aging man hugging onto life, His last strength poured into his letter. Does he not know his words await tears? His determination to finish makes him stubborn. His words trickle onto a page like teardrops, His last lines of life, his letters of love. His frozen lifeless body alone, spiritless. All is gone, resting in peace, but for his letter. Scott’s lifetime of ice concealed on a page Like a bird trapped in a cage Was death his biggest enemy or was it words? Did he let those words of defeat run over him? The patchworked mind full of paragraphs, Scott in his perplexed state of mind, Lost in those words. For him it felt like forever, Just him and those words perishing together Eleanor (aged 12) The Frozen Biscuit Wrapper The last hope of a hungry man The phantom of the biscuit, Long gone Trapped in stone cold frigidity Frozen to a dead man’s tomb Corners flapping feebly in the roaring whiteout Waiting, waiting for the sun For the comfort of caressing rays Dreaming of release From a long, long, wait. But it’s still there On the bottom of our globe Affixed to a grave Looking out at the bright light Waiting, day in, day out For a new life and purpose A new biscuit. Laura (aged 12) The Canoe Gliding along through a barren waste The carved paddle I pull myself through the chilly waters I will die if I spend a minute below this land of ice floes Inside its freezing, churning belly. The sleek frame, covered in seal hide, One leak and I’ll never go home I will live in the land of the dead Under the frozen wastes Of a land I know so well Everything in reach Even a floating map so if it’s dropped I’ll not be lost A paddle, my food, my water, my spear... They will last me for eternity Rupert (aged 12) Clearly, direct contact with genuine artefacts has inspired these young writers. They may only have been at the museum for two hours, but their imagination has been transported to the spiritual home of their chosen subject matter and their interest in it has driven them to find out more about it, to bring it to life again within its original context. This illustrates perfectly how the use of objects can help to elicit convincing poetic renderings of places to which you cannot physically take your pupils. A favourite dictum of teachers of creative writing to their students is: “Write about what you know.” However, introduce them to something (or somewhere) totally new and, provided you have given them the time and the means to engage with it and form an emotional connection with it, you may well find that they are just as capable of evoking it as they would be able to do with, say, their garden or their bedroom. Indeed, I agree with Ted Hughes’ point in Poetry in the Making, his seminal handbook for teachers of poetry, when he says: “It will usually be found that children write more rewardingly - both for themselves and for the reader - about strange or extreme landscapes than about anything they know well. It is as if what they know well can only become imagination, and available to the pen, when they have somehow left it. Deserts, steppes, the Antarctic, the moon, all come more easily than the view from their bedroom window.” One possible further reason as to why children today are capable of writing convincingly outside of their own experience is the prevalence of the internet in their day-to-day lives. With information about anything and everything at their fingertips, children can and do find out what they wish to know about the world around them much more easily than they would have been able to do at the time of Hughes’ writing. They no longer rely upon their parents and teachers to tell them what they don’t know, or indeed, how to go about finding it out. Their explorations in cyberspace are every bit as real and meaningful as the explorations of dusty attics, rock pools and treetops that previous generations would have thought of as the staples of childhood discovery. Thus, whether or not a child has been fortunate enough to have walked down the streets of Tokyo, watched the sun setting over the pyramids of Giza or watched the northern lights shimmering through the glass roof of a Swedish igloo, they are now empowered to write about it in ways that most of today’s adults can never have imagined doing at their age. |
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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