"Poetry helps children make sense of their world" - do you agree?

[MumsnetGuestBlogs]

Poetry has fallen out of favour. Children tend to come across it almost entirely through the dreaded comprehension homework - and I think too that some booksellers, teachers and librarians can be a little bit scared of it. But like superhero movies, it is coming back. Michael Gove (love him or hate him) is introducing more poetry into the curriculum.

I’d like to convince you that our children will gain from this. From next September all children in primary school will learn poems by heart. Having a store of poems, children will grow up with a little juke-box of wondrous words inside their head, which will be there to console them as they lurch into adolescence and all the strong emotions that the state can bring.

Tom Hiddleston, who reads on The Love Book app, puts it thus: “I think poetry as a form is about the that simplest literature can get… all of the trimmings have been stripped away, and really great poets have got to the heart of the matter by using very, very few, brilliant words, to make you feel something, which, for most people, is inexpressible. So the size of their love, the loudness of it, the intensity of it; most people feel it coursing through their body - but only a very few people have been able to set it down in verbal form, that somehow gets close to what it feels like.”

The idea for The Love Book app grew out of the slightly surprising success of the first app I co-created, iF Poems. iF Poems’ aim was to introduce children to the joys of poetry through an interactive app, with poems read by actors they might like, such as Helena Bonham Carter, whom they knew as Bellatrix Lestrange in Harry Potter, or as the mad toddler-tantrum-throwing Red Queen in Tim Burton’s Alice; or Tom Hiddleston, who plays the scene-stealing anti-hero Loki in the The Avengers films.

I decided this new app would be specifically about love - an app for adolescents, and adults too. There is a poem on it by John Clare called ‘First Love’ which beautifully expresses the feeling of falling in love for the first time. The line ‘blood burnt around my heart’ takes me right back to the confusion of my sixteen-year-old, overwhelmed self, which was reassured by the poet’s genius with words - and by the universality of what I was feeling. There is, I think, something about poetry which helps to crystallise emotion, and I found this terribly comforting as a teenager – it helped me to make sense of the flood of feelings I felt - perhaps, even, to contain them. I wanted today’s teens to have this option too.

Perhaps they might also draw from their stock of words a sticking plaster - another section of The Love Book app deals with when love is thwarted, or when it’s over. I imagine the user of the app stealing a line to help with these desperate moments – perhaps the two-line poem by George MacDonald, which says simply, “Come home.”

So far, things are going well. The we posted of Tom Hiddleston reading Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?) has had 35,000 hits in a week, and seems to be reaching people who had previously written off Shakespeare as ‘that dull class at school’.

National Poetry Day’s director, Susannah Herbert says “It’s like having a little Cyrano de Bergerac on permanent standby in the palm of your hand.”

Try it! From John Fuller’s ‘Valentine’: “I’d like to find you in the shower/And chase the soap for half an hour” or “I’d like to find a good excuse/To call on you and find you in./I’d like to put my hand beneath your chin,/And see you grin.”

Think the anti-superhero Loki could even win over Bellatrix with that line.



Do you read poetry - either to your children, or by yourself? Is it a good thing for children to learn poetry 'by heart'? Tell us what you think on the thread.

[singersgirl]

Of course poetry 'helps' people of any age make sense of the world. How can that not be true of any art? Anything that gives people different ways of understanding things, different ways of expressing their feelings, observations and beliefs, anything that makes them reflect more deeply or see something another way 'helps' them make sense of the world.

Perhaps the very literal posters who've responded so narrowly haven't read enough poetry. Of course it's not the only or even the most important tool to 'help' children make sense of the world.

Just because it's a minority interest among adults doesn't mean we should deprive our children of it. For some of them, it may turn out to be important. Loads of little girls (and some boys) do ballet; loads of little children do martial arts. Both of these are minority interests among adults. But we let them explore, learn, discover, strengthen their bodies.

Poetry lets them strengthen their mind. If it grabs them, there's a thriving adult poetry scene for them to join, from Spoken Word to poetry slams to traditional readings to open mic nights. In the last week I've been to 4 poetry events - the launch of a new book, the launch of a new issue of a magazine, prize readings for a big award and a workshop.

Look up Polar Bear on YouTube. Look up filmpoems. Listen to old recordings of Michael Donaghy, or Sylvia Plath, or Yeats. Read a poetry blog. Read an online journal. Be one of the 13,000 entries into the National Poetry Competition and have a chance of winning £5,000. Explore the resources at the Poetry Society. Look up the Foyles Young Poet competition. Read a poem. Write a poem.

I think the original idea is great but wonder why it has to be focused on love. When I was little I loved my children's anthology of verses and I chose poems to learn that helped me process many things - war (Southey's'Twas a famous victory, Browning's How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix, the WW1 poets), death (If I have fears that I may cease to be, Ozymandias), time and change ((Thomas Hood's I remember, I remember), etc. I'd give more examples but I'm on my phone.

[Rockinhippy]

Mmmm, Dali, Bridget Riley et al really help everyone make sense of the world don't they

I love art, I have been lucky enough to make a career out of it, I love poetry & have even been published, I think it's all very important stuff,

But your reply is patronising, judgemental tosh

[singersgirl]

Of course Dali and Bridget Jones 'help' people make sense of the world. We use them all as a filter to help interpret our experience. I can't see how, particularly if you've made a career out of art, you don't agree with that. And even if none of the art you make has helped you understand or express anything in any way (which seems odd), it's not true for everyone. Poetry helps me make sense of my world. It helps lots of other people I know too. I'm sorry I was patronising. I think using the word 'tosh' is patronising and judgemental. After all, it's not tosh for me. It's true for me. So it might be true for lots of children who haven't yet been exposed to poetry.

[singersgirl]

Sorry, don't know why I typed Jones instead of Riley. Must have been a Freudian slip...

[Rockinhippy]

In YOUR opinion,certainly not in my opinion - you write it as fact - it is. NOT

Though I think Bridget Jones might fair better

[Rockinhippy]

I do get that it's that way for you & therefore maybe for some DCs, but I honestly suspect that's the exception rather than the rule.

Though I do agree with you as far as the OP referring to love poetry - that to me makes it tosh

[TerrorMeSue]

No, I do not think it helps them understand the world. A lot of poetry is total crap.

[penguinpaperback]

I think it's wonderful poetry will be given more time in schools. And if poetry is the 'cool' app on a teenager's phone it could be of some comfort when you're stood up or are at home on a Saturday night when everyone else is at the party. It might make you search out more poetry or perhaps write some poetry yourself.
We have nursery rhyme books and poetry books all over the house but reading this thread and some of the enthusiastic replies has made me search out my old poetry books and I've treated myself to some new ones. I love listening to Poetry Please and the different reasons why a particular poem is special to someone.
Good Luck with The Love Book Allie.

[holmessweetholmes]

No I don't think poetry helps kids make sense of their world at all. That doesn't mean to say that they can't enjoy it and appreciate it. I rather resent the reference to 'the dreaded comprehension homework'. I teach English and have spent the whole of this half term looking at poetry with my year 8 class - from sonnets to shape poems to looking at lyrics of Katy Perry songs as a poem, plus getting the students to write their own limericks and sonnets. Anyone who thinks classes just do dry comprehension questions is very out of touch with education.

[IHaveA]

I am afraid that I am in the a lot of poetry is crap Camp. I also think that poetry is a very personal thing and that everyone's taste is very different. The. Trouble with forcing poetry on teens is that it can put them off for life rather than encouraging them.

Incidentally, I have an 18 year old that reads poems for enjoyment, he generally enjoys playful funny poems rather than the self indulgent crap stuff.

I always read poetry to my kids when they were young but I was very selective. There is a musical lyrical quality in a lot of poetry that many children love.
Unfortunately, a lot of the poetry that they have been exposed to at school is dire and even the good stuff looses its attraction after having to analyse every single word of it.

[sleepingdragons]

Poetry is one of those things that's often really badly taught IMO.

One of my primary teachers was married to a poet and very influenced by him. We did poetry all the time, but that didn't mean reading poems we didn't understand and having to do exercises on them.

That meant writing poetry. It really made us think about language and the construction of sentences in a creative way. The school gave us inspiring experiences to write poems about - after trips to art galleries we'd be encouraged to write poems about the art we'd seen. Or we'd listen to music and write poems about what we imagined.

I've still got some of the collections of poems we wrote as kids, and some of them are pretty good.

It was a playful and empowering approach to learning to use our own language with confidence. I don't think it's any coincidence that several children from my class have gone on to have successful careers in the arts.

Then I went to secondary, and "poetry" was something you were forced to do - reading dry poems we didn't understand but which were officially "great" (whether we thought so or not was irrelevant), learning them and completing exercises where there was a right or wrong answer.

So, I totally get why people don't like poetry, but I put that down to poor teaching and choice of poems.