Remembering (IV)

‘Baking’ by Phoebe Boswall
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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.
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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.