The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost.
My tryst with poetry this year began when we had a poetry workshop conducted by Sujata Noronha during the summer vacations. I had never taken to poetry much in school or college. But this workshop changed the way I now look at poetry.
We used Ezra Pound’s poem ‘In a Station of the Metro’ to study how to notice a poem – its structure, rhythm, its idea, the play of words to create visual images in the minds of the readers. The thing that stayed with me the most after the workshop was that you can make your own meaning for any poem, and a poem can mean different things to different people.
This year we included a poetry segment in all our Libraries in Schools classes to share with them the joy of listening, thinking and feeling about poetry. Different objectives were kept for different classes so that the children experience poetry at the level of their understanding.
For Classes 1 and 2, we focused on rhythm and how words can play with your imagination. Class 3 experienced shared poetry reading and brought out their own interpretation, while Class 4 got the experience of writing a poem. The poems for each class were selected based on these objectives.
We were all surprised at how well the children received the poetry sessions. They enjoyed singing the poems they knew, listened intently to the poetry being recited and participated wholeheartedly in telling us what they thought the poem meant.
I worked mostly with Class 4 children and used a cloze poem, one that has certain words omitted from each line to help the children write their own poetry, with the children filling in their own words in the blanks. It was a poem about what a library means to you. The responses of the children made me realize that books have a deep and positive impact on young minds. One child Abhinav, also remarked that everyone’s poem will be different as everyone thinks differently, something so similar to what I felt at the end of the workshop.
Taking poetry to the children has been a very memorable experience for me – planning the sessions with my colleagues, selecting the poems to be used, rehearsing and performing the poetry, and finally seeing the children construct their own meanings. I learnt so much in the process, and have acquired a new found appreciation for this form of writing.
“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all”.
Hope Is The Thing With Feathers, Emily Dickinson