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You can dedicate a poem to someone’s memory, or to celebrate an anniversary or achievement, or simply because you love them Value their voice and their experience. Let them know that the things they are interested in, whatever that may be, is ripe material for a poem be it computer games, unicorns or Pokémon! And that their opinions and their take on things can also make great poems. Maybe they want to write a poem about their favourite football team, or why they think they should be able to eat cake for dinner or why adults should do more about climate change!
Poetry of Joseph Coelho – Poetry of Joseph Coelho The Poetry of Joseph Coelho – Poetry of Joseph Coelho
No amount of vocal beauty will compensate for the unfortunate fact that you have no idea what the poem means. Figure it out before you start.
Each poem is accompanied by practical suggestions about a variety of performance techniques. Children are encouraged to experiment with a range of voices for each poem. For example, would a lion speak differently than a frog or an ant? How would inanimate objects sound, such as a pencil case or slime? Do some poems have more impact if they are whispered or shouted? Does varying the tone, pace or volume of a poem change the atmosphere? You can listen to Tennyson enunciating ‘Half a league, half a league’ here, but his poem about the Battle of Balaclava sounds great when read aloud by just about anyone. This poem was included in Shel Silverstein’s 1981 collection Light in the Attic. It tells the story of a creature called a “coo-coo” that climbs into the unzipped skin of the speaker. Much-loved poet and author Clive James was enthralled by poetry all his life. He knew hundreds of poems by heart, and believed that the best poems are impossible to forget. He also believed that the way a poem sounds is its most important quality, writing in the introduction to The Fire of Joy, completed shortly before his death, that ‘if a poem doesn’t sound compelling, it won’t continue to exist.’ Here, we share just a few of Clive’s favourite poems to read aloud, along with his rules for reciting poetry. On the Ning Nang Nong’is one of the best examples of a funny, surprising, and confusing poem. The famous lines use nonsense language consistently to mimic sounds and create an entire world.
favourite poems to read aloud - Pan Macmillan Clive James’s favourite poems to read aloud - Pan Macmillan
The late Seamus Heaney was a significant supporter of Poetry Aloud. When he won the David Cohen Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, he nominated Poetry Aloud for the accompanying Clarissa Luard Award, and he remarked, “I truly believe Poetry Aloud deserves all the support it can get, because it promotes literature, and, in particular, poetry, widely, intimately and to inestimable effect. But fundamentally, I choose it because it brings poetry into the memory and affections of the young in a way that will make it a lifelong possession and value”. I have even talked the head into a little revamp of the library so that we can display them properly! Should poetry be read in quiet solitude, enjoyed in silence? Or is poetry at its best when it is being declaimed, recited for an audience, and read aloud for the world to hear? The answer, of course, is ‘both’ and ‘it perhaps depends on the poem’. Read, Recite, Share Your Voice Poetry Out Loud is a national arts education program that encourages the study of great poetry by offering free educational materials and a dynamic recitation competition for high school students across the country. This program helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about literary history and contemporary life.I’m thinking here of his spread for the poem This Bear, a poem about a bear being released into the wild after a lifetime of captivity. Daniel’s spread shows the bear from behind gazing up into a beautiful pink sky and it’s like you can hear the bear’s sigh of relief to be free. How did you take the initial ideas of Poems Aloud into print and how long did this take? Did you start off with a single poem and were asked to write more by the publisher? I think it’s rare to have a day in a school where there isn’t a moment of joyous laughter- comes with the territory. I often run an exercise where I get the whole class to walk around the room reading their poems aloud all at the same time, as you can imagine the classroom becomes a cacophony of sound. I then shout “FREEZE” and then challenge them to continue reading but this time using a happy voice, they continue reading and now the sound is loud but very happy until I shout “FREEZE” again and suggest: an angry voice/a chilled voice/a robot voice/a witch’s voice!/ a silly voice. Each iteration often leads to students rolling on the floor laughing at their own voices and the strange sounds issuing from their classmates’ lips. Your book is beautifully illustrated by Daniel Gray-Barnett, how do the illustrations compliment your work? The act of putting pen to paper should be a fun experience and very little is more fun than writing in a beautiful book with a brilliant pen. Thomas’s impassioned plea to his father to ‘rage, rage against the dying of the light’ – written when his father lay dying in the early 1950s – is a great poem to read aloud not least because it is an example of a villanelle, which involves repeating, mantra-like, two key lines throughout the poem. He goes through a number of different countries and activities he’d like to participate or not participate in. These include keeping wild animals, like elephants, not wearing his hat or brushing his hair, and thinking of “lovely things to do.” Here are the first two couplets:
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