Poetry

Listening to Poetry

Contemporary poet Fiona Sampson is first drawn to sound in her own work (in contrast to many other writers who are predominantly visual in their approach). Sampson describes listening as 'a kind of hotline to poetic attention'. You could help your student teachers to explore this idea by:

Trying out listening workshop activities
Go to Fiona Sampson's workshop page at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/jul/02/poetry and try out some of her ideas.

What other listening activities could you introduce?

Listening to your draft poem
In my view, this is an important element of the drafting process as it enables a writer to get some distance on their work and to hear how effectively their intentions for their poem have actually been realised. Listening to drafts read aloud should form part of a longer conversation with a drafting partner about each other's work in progress.

Listening to Poetry Archive recordings
The archive (at http://www.poetryarchive.org) is a rich and ever expanding resource of contemporary poets reading their own work. Student teachers could listen and devise personal or thematic 'tours' of the site, modeled on the examples provided by Jean Sprackland and Andrew Motion. The site also contains historic recordings of Tennyson, Sassoon and e e cummings together with lesson plans and an excellent glossary.

Listening to the rhythms of poetry
Phil Beadle's two programmes on poems from the AQA GCSE anthology (at http://www.teachers.tv/) should inspire student teachers to develop their own strategies for exploring rhythm.