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National Poetry Day postcards, Scotland 2012
for adult reading and writing groups

Meg Bateman, Màthair (Mother)

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Sea Poppy 2

Tracey Herd, Breakfast at Tiffanys

Norman MacCaig, Stars and Planets

James McGonigal, Little Star

Iain Crichton Smith, Toward the Stars

Robert Louis Stevenson, Escape at Bedtime

Jane Taylor, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (Scots version by Lorna Irvine)

Ideas for group reading and discussion, and creative writing

THE POETS AND THE POEMS

For background information about the poets, and the individual poems, see the Teachers’ Resources for each poem, available at

READING THE POEMS

The questions below are intended as starting points for discussion – some may be more appropriate to certain poems than to others.

Content

  • Where and when does the poem take place?
  • What do we learn about the speaker of the poem?
  • What role in the poem do stars play? Think about them in terms of
  • the setting
  • the emotions of the characters in the poem
  • What is the overall mood of the poem?
  • Do you think the poem is broadly optimistic or pessimistic? Why?

Look at the title of the poem.

  • How does the title relate to the body of the poem?
  • Is it purely descriptive, or does it provide or suggest something additional?
  • Does it affect your reading of the poem, in other words, would you read the poem in the same way if the title were absent?

Look at the way contrast is used in the poem. What images are there of

  • stillness & movement
  • light & dark
  • silence & sounds
  • near & far
  • life & death
  • time & eternity

Form

Look at the form of the poem. As well as reading the poem on the page, be sure to read it aloud – you can often hear certain patterns or ‘sound effects’ which may be less obvious on the page.

  • How many stanzas (verses) does the poem have?
  • How long is each stanza?
  • Is each stanza the same length?
  • How many lines does the poem have?
  • Is each line the same length?
  • Is the metre (rhythm) regular or irregular?
  • Does the poem rhyme? If so, is there a regular or irregular pattern of rhymes?
  • If the poem uses rhyme, write out a rhyme scheme for the poem.
  • Which lines use enjambment, that is carry over a phrase from one line to the next?
  • How do the formal aspects of the poem – stanzas, lines, rhymes and enjambment – affect your understanding of the poem?

DISCUSSION & RESEARCH

Make a list of any

  • planets
  • comets or meteors
  • stars
  • constellations
  • galaxies

which you know the names of.

Make a list of any names local to you that are related to planets and stars. Think about the names of

  • streets
  • houses
  • boats
  • shops
  • cafés, pubs and restaurants
  • businesses

CREATIVE ACTIVITY

Use the names from the lists above in your own poems. You could write

  • a haiku including one of the names
  • an acrostic or mesostic poem featuring one of the names
  • a ‘days of the week’ poem, with each line or stanza featuring one day of the week plus one of the names
  • a list poem, with each line including one name
  • an alphabet poem – your own A to Z of the stars

There are writing activities related to the individual poems in the Teachers’ Resources, as follows:

Meg Bateman, Màthair (Mother)

•Write a poem about your relationship with a member of your family.

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Sea Poppy 2

•Write a poem made up solely of names, and present it visually.

Tracey Herd, Breakfast at Tiffanys

•Write a villanelle about a person you admire – a real-life figure, or someone from a book.

Norman MacCaig, Stars and Planets

•Write a poem, using the perspectives of ‘Stars and Planets’.

James McGonigal, Little Star

•Write a poem in which you speak to a star.

Iain Crichton Smith, Toward the Stars

•Describe your own spaceship, its crew and its voyage through space.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Escape at Bedtime

•Write a poem about seeing the stars in the night sky.

Jane Taylor, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (Scots version by Lorna Irvine)

•Write your own version (or parody) of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’.

FURTHER READING

Frontier of going: an anthology of space poetry, selected and with an introduction by John Fairfax (Panther, 1969)

Spaceways: an anthology of space poetry, edited by John Foster (OUP, 1986)

Starfield: the anthology of science fiction by Scottish writers, edited by Duncan Lunan. (Orkney Press, 1989)

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Ken Cockburn

July 2012

National Poetry Day Scotland & loads more ideas for readers, writers and browsers