Canterbury Festival
Schools’ Poetry Competition
Teaching Resources for Secondary Schools
About
The annual county-wide search for tomorrow's famous poets has begun!
Canterbury Festival’s poetry competition is open all pupils within Kent schools, with age categories 5-8 years, 9-11 years, 12-15 years and 16-18 years. The deadline for entries is Friday 21 July.
Entries are shortlisted by a panel of judges, with the top entries printed in an anthology. The competition culminates in a celebration event on October 3rd with readings from our published poets and prizes for the winners of each category. This event precedes the adult Poet of the Year awards evening.
We look forward to receiving your school’s entries!
This Year’s Theme
The theme of the 2017 Canterbury Festival Schools’ Poetry Competition is Here There and Everywhere. We hope this broad theme will be widely interpreted by applicants- as a suggestion pupils could explore their favourite locations, places, periods of time and/or space.
The following are just ideas, and pupils shouldn’t feel like they have to follow a certain format: the more imaginative, creative and original, the better!
This resource has been designed to be flexible – either to work through from start to finish, or to be used on a more ad-hoc basis.
Exercise One: What is a poem?
The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
TASK ONE:
Ask your students to respond to these poems. What is different about each one? Which ones have they heard before, and which ones seem more like a ‘poem’? Encourage them to consider the variety within the genre of poetry.
TASK TWO:
Having considered the above poems, ask the students to write their own poem in a similar style to one of the examples. For example, in the sonnet form, or using only six words, etc.
Exercise Two: Exploring Locations (Here)
Extract from Questions of Travel,
Elizabeth Bishop
There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams
hurry too rapidly down to the sea,
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.
--For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,
aren't waterfalls yet,
in a quick age or so, as ages go here,
they probably will be.
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,
slime-hung and barnacled.
Think of the long trip home.
OPTION ONE:
If possible, take the children outside to an available space. This could be a grassy space or a concrete outside section of the school. Allow them to explore the area, and encourage discussions about the objects and scenery that interest them.
Ask them to choose one thing, and spend a couple of minutes describing it, either to each other or in a large group. Get them to write these ideas down, and potentially draw their chosen object for later reference.
When back inside the classroom, ask the students to attempt to write their chosen object into a poem. This could be solely based in the location that they have explored, or the object itself, or the object in a new location. If students are particularly stuck, show them the images on the following page as potential inspiration. Please refer to the above examples of location poetry for further inspiration.
OPTION TWO:
Ask the students to consider what happens in different locations, and why these may be important for poets. For example, how is a city different to the countryside? What could be used as inspiration in a beach location that may not be used on the top of a mountain? What does each image make the students think of? Can they think of any poetry or novels that may have been influenced by such locations?
Ask the students to choose a place somewhere in the world that they especially like. The students should attempt to describe their chosen place without using specific locating words (e.g. forest, brazil, mountain, etc. are not allowed). Instead, the students should think about their reactions to the location – their senses, emotions, experiences, etc.
Exercise Three: Memory and Sensory:
Extract from A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey
by William Wordsworth
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur.*—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Among the woods and copses lose themselves,
Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees,
With some uncertain notice, as might seem,
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire
The hermit sits alone.
TASK ONE:
In groups, discuss the concept of memory. How do we remember? Is it through smells? Music? Images?
Ask the students to think of their favourite smells and what it makes them think of. For example, freshly cut grass makes people think of summer, the smell of old books makes people think of libraries, the smell of baked bread makes people think of home, etc.
Writers often draw inspiration from their memories of real events. Ask the children how they could be inspired by their pasts? What about Tintern Abbey may have inspired Wordsworth to remember the space five years after he originally visited it.
TASK TWO:
A picture is worth a thousand words. Ask the students to choose a photograph on their phones or other electronic devices that means something to them. This could be any image that prompts the students to think of a specific memory (within reason).
Ask the students to describe what they can see in the photograph, and what they remember from what happened when the picture was taken. Get them to look at Wordworth’s poem as inspiration, and ask the pupils to write their own poem in whatever form they like about their chosen memory.
4. Exercise Four: The Here and Now (Lyrics)
Extract from Castle on the Hill
Ed Sheeran
When I was six years old I broke my leg
I was running from my brother and his friends
And tasted the sweet perfume of the mountain grass I rolled down
I was younger then, take me back to when I
Found my heart and broke it here
Made friends and lost them through the years
And I've not seen the roaring fields in so long, I know I've grown
But I can't wait to go home
I'm on my way
Driving at 90 down those country lanes
Singing to "Tiny Dancer"
And I miss the way you make me feel, and it's real
We watched the sunset over the castle on the hill
TASK ONE:
In groups, ask the students to discuss why someone would write a song as opposed to a poem. What does the music add? Try reading out the lyrics without the music and have the students play with stress and emphasis on different words so that the songs start to have a different meaning. How does this change the feel of the song?
To encourage pupils to consider rhythm and speed play the opening verse of The Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel and the recent cover by Disturbed. How does speed affect the meaning behind the lyrics?
TASK TWO:
Spoken poetry, or slam poetry, has a heavy focus on the sounds words make. Therefore rhyme is often incredibly important to the poets.
The following examples of spoken poetry are all available on YouTube:
- No Breathing in Class, by Michael Rosen.
- If I should have a daughter . . . , by Sarah Kay. As this is a Ted talk, only play the first three and a half minutes until the poem ends. The video goes on to explain spoken poetry so feel free to play the whole video or encourage students to watch the entire video at home.
- How to Unfold a Memory, Sabrina Benaim.
- Blink, by Lamar Jorden (Louder than a Bomb extras).
Using the above extracts from Ed Sheeran and The Beetles, take a line and try to find as many rhyming words for each word as possible. Encourage the students the find unusual and internal rhymes as well as well as the more obvious rhymes. As the winning poems will be read aloud at the Awards Ceremony, the students should think about how the words sound – after all the English language is full of words that only rhyme when said rather than how they look on the page.
TASK THREE:
As a class, come up with a poem on the spot!
Take in turns to go around the room, possibly using a soft ball or bean bag to change up the order rather than go around the room, and say a line. The following line has to start with a word that rhymes with the last word said previously.
5. Exercise Five: Styles of Poem
The poems submitted to the competition don’t need to be long ballads, though of course students shouldn’t be discouraged from entering such if they want. However, often the shorter poems are the hardest to compose due to stricter restrictions on form.
• A haiku is a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five traditionally evoking images of the natural world. The lines rarely rhyme.
• Sonnets are poems of fourteen lines. The English tradition follows an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme. Modern sonnets often break these rules so allow experimentation.
• A Limerick is a funny poem with five lines with a rhyming scheme of AABBA.
Can’t Fall Asleep,
By Barbara Writes
a.
It's three am in the twilight
my iPad is my nightlight
the music on my iPhone
drones on all night long
and I can't sleep to save my life.
b.
I woke up feeling well, took heed
as tomorrow is not promise me
taking one day at a time in my stride
moving about taking my time
not to take for granted this day indeed.
c.
I'm awake early and feeling great
immediately rising up in haste
as those abusive words that depress
is driven away leaving me fresh
TASK ONE:
We will be bringing examples of photos and artwork on postcards to the workshops we will be running. If we are unable to run a workshop at your school, please use the images from Exercise One or ask students to bring in their own pictures.
Ask the pupils to write their own haiku / sonnet / limerick.
TASK TWO:
Looking at each image, pick five nouns to describe it, for example tree, sky, sunlight, grass, dog. They then write a line of poetry using each noun. These five separate lines then become one poem.
An example of this exercise can be seen below by the poet, Patricia Debney and photographer, Phil Ward (This example can also be found from the website: iteratingkent.wordpress.com/2015/01/21/cycling-writing-the-poems/ )
The nouns Patricia started with were: Sky, Bridge, Tree, Night and Spire.
Students can cut out these nouns to move them around if they would like, but this is optional.
Pupils can use the exercises in the lesson to create poems to submit for the competition, or if they want to create their own original poems based on their own pictures, we’d love to read those too! We look forward to receiving your entries!