When I was a young girl I dreamed of being a poet. I used poetry then and still do as a means of escaping from the harsh realities that surround us. Poetry is one’s unique world created by imagery and words. If we create a utopia in our minds, we elevate our sense of contentment. Even Freud said: “Not I, but the poet discovered the unconscious.”
Poetry is one of my best friends and I use it in therapy as a means of getting through to our pupils, for writing exercises, ideation formation and therapy where their barriers to learning are related to depression, anxiety and inattention.
Think of the books which speak to our kids the most. The ones which they can identify most with. Like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Diary of Adrian Mole and Judy Blume.
For the writer, poetry is the one thing that is subjective. It is a means of expression without revealing things literally. Poetry is the verbal or written means of painting a picture. The fluidity of the words reveals bottled feelings and also heals. For the reader, it is a canvas of one’s personal interpretation.
Just as words have the ability to break one, they have the ability to heal, build esteem and calm. In many ways prayer is healing poetry. Poetry is also a great ice breaker for introductory lessons too. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder children often have the inability to conform to the structural elements of writing, and poetry is, therefore, a free-flowing way of conveying ideas.
Our society places so many expectations on our children and so many children are so desperate to fit in, that they never find the ability to express themselves freely and to be who they really are. At some point in our lives we have all lost an element of ourselves trying to be accepted and loved. For this reason, we need to encourage our children to write diary entries or poems as a means of expressing themselves.
Encourage communication, free your child’s soul, and open your mind and support.
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Areas where rhythmic arts and literacy can be used
* Literacy: thinking and reasoning – This area is good for brainstorming, abstract reasoning and psychoanalysing.
* Literacy: reading and comprehension – This area works on reading each other’s narratives and understanding what one has written in a real way.
* Literacy: writing and sequencing – The ability to sequence ideas together to create a story.
* Numeracy: patterns and logic – Although poetry is not in the area of numeracy, different poetry requires different sequential patterns. For example, a Haiku poem has 3 lines with 17 syllables. The pattern being 5, 7, 5. A cinquain, on the other hand, has 5 lines with 22 syllables in the pattern of 2, 4, 6, 8, 2.
* Literacy: rhyming and phonological awareness – Not all poems rhyme. My best friend likes to write her poetry as prose. Here there is no rhythmic structure but merely words which create a figurative dance on the page. My writing preference on the other hand is rhyme (perhaps the remedial therapist and Type A personality in me.) Here, structure and sounds are matched.
Phonological awareness is the crucial precursor in learning to read. How? The awareness of phonemes cultivates the auditory analysis and synthesis (breaking up words and blending them) as well as to spell phonetically.
An example is nursery rhymes, like:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
* Literacy: ideation – “Ideation is the creative process of generating and communicating new ideas, where an idea is understood as a basic element of thought that can be either visual, concrete, or abstract. Ideation comprises all stages of a thought cycle, from innovation, to development, to actualisation.”
Children who have ideational apraxia have the inability to plan and execute actions.
Poetry is a great way of developing ideation. Poetry prompts work much like picture prompts where pictures of poems spark ideas.
Get children to sit in a circle. Each child has to clap a pattern and the rest have to copy, and then say a word and the next child has to say a relating word. An example: girl, pretty, tall, brunette, curvy etc.
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Scarlet Tears
Fires ablaze within my eyes,
A smile concealing all my lies,
Screaming, begging, calling out,
A final, frantic, desperate, shout.
Scarlet tears drip from each vein,
A vehement covet to end this pain,
This silver blade, stays by my side,
Because all hope inside has died.
As each day ends, and darkness draws,
The devil toys, with all my flaws,
I’m helpless, alone, a worthless mess,
A broken child, he must address.
I’m tempted when he calls my name,
A way out, an escape, an end to shame,
To make it feel a lot less real,
A deal with the devil, in blood must I seal.
They’ll say I died of suicide,
But no one knows how much they’ve lied,
It wasn’t a rope, a blade, or pills,
That broke my soul, and gave me chills.
I died inside so long before,
To live each day, an endless chore,
Pills could not kill what was already dead,
A twisted soul, an empty head.
In darkness I wait, in silence, alone,
Rose-tinted nostalgia, all around me has grown,
I beckon the devil, with the key of self-harm,
And I open the door for him, with the blood of my arm.
* A poem by a girl who was considering suicide. It encourages other teenagers to write about their feelings, discuss them and work through them. It can save a life.