Writing Together 2003/4

Five days in a school

Writer Rose Flint
School Hardenhuish School, Chippenham
Coordinating Teacher Isabel Palmer

Poet Rose Flint worked with six groups of Year 8 students (approximately 170 pupils) chosen by the teachers and ranging in ability. Each group had two sessions with Rose, lasting an hour and forty minutes. They explored a shared theme and focused on a specific poetic form. By the end of the first session, students had a draft poem which could be worked on during the intervening days. The poems were then completed in the second session, ready for inclusion in a school anthology.

Following initial meetings with David Cohen, Head of English, and later with Isabel Palmer, the school’s liaison teacher, preparation for the residency was swift. Rose spent three days writing and selecting suitable examples of poetic forms, preparing warm-up exercises and compiling hand-outs. Isabel liaised with participating teachers, negotiating cover and managing rooming issues and cross-curricular movement.

From the outset, there was positive anticipation. Rose wanted pupils to gain interest in the possibilities of poetry, understand how to enrich their writing, believe in their own creativity and raise the level of literacy in all subjects across the curriculum. “If a school cares enough about its students’ creativity to bring in a professional artist of any kind, this sends a message to the pupils that this part of themselves is respected and valued.”

The theme and poetic forms were decided in consultation. For the theme, the consensus was that students should think about what kind of future they might want, involving social, political and environmental considerations. When selecting the forms, there were some concerns about using the more complicated sonnet form, but it was generally felt worth trying as a top-of-the-scale difficulty for the pupils. Acrostics were deemed appropriate for the lower set, with the other sets focusing on haiku/renga, tercets, free verse and ballads.

The sessions took place over two weeks, with Rose visiting three groups per day for four days. Although each group focused on a different poetic form, the structure of the sessions was very similar. They began with a warm-up activity where pupils were asked to consider the question, ‘If a poem was a bird/insect/animal/weather condition, what would it be and why?’

A poem is a flea
that jumps from person to person
Ben Robinson

A poem is a cloud
because it takes you off to another land
Ollie Harris

Other exercises involved pupils using objects, such as feathers, as a stimulus for writing – ‘imagine what it would be like to be a bird and fly’ – or describing the view from their bedroom window, where the poem acts like binoculars, focusing on details in the scene:

Frog, grass,
Field of trees, horse,
Cow, caterpillar,
Fox, badger, dog, house, river,
Willow, road,
Daisies, dog, sheep, mud,
Waterfall, wasps’ nest,
Zyanna, my sister,
These are the things I can see
Emerald green moss on top of the pond,
Bush, hedge, lake,
This is what I can see
Golden sun setting, silver moon brewing,
Waiting for
12.00
to strike

Mica Cox

When it came to writing their themed poems, Rose encouraged pupils to contribute to group discussions. Rose and the teacher then worked one-to-one with individuals. The results were read back to the group, with Rose giving each pupil advice about re-drafting their poems (“put fresh colours into the sketch you’ve made”), using imagery and detail (“the smaller the detail, the bigger the impact”) and hints about style and technique. Everyone had a draft to work with over the week. In the second sessions this process was continued, again with opportunities for one-to-one feedback and open readings.

By the end of the residency, the poems were written; many were of an exceptionally high standard, with students feeling proud of their achievements: “it’s fun learning how to put a poem together”; “I keep getting my writing wrong because I keep running away with ideas!” Most students relished the chance to grapple with an unfamiliar process and were responsive to exercises designed to show them how to raise the standard of their work.

Clearly, the pupils enjoyed the fact that their work was being taken seriously by a professional writer. Boys in particular responded very well. They enjoyed the ‘puzzle’ of keeping thought allied to form and, certainly, the motivation and interest in writing poems amongst the less able/disaffected boys was marked.

Rose’s work with the lowest set was also remarkably successful. This group all wrote accomplished acrostic poems, excelling the expectations of their teacher. Rose states: “One boy was stuck. I talked to him for a while and discovered that what really caught his imagination was the future of skateboarding – skyboarding – so he wrote about that and produced a delightful poem that really boosed his self-esteem”.

HOVERBOARD

Hovering in the sky
Over the houses
Vibes! Riders throw your body forward when you hover!
Every kid likes taking them out,
Riding into the sky like a hover car, but lower.
Bodies are seen in the sky, flying everywhere.
Old people do it for fun,
All older than me.
Rivers flow under me as I go
Diving in the sky.

Stephan Donaldson

For Rose, the key to the success of the residency lay very much with the teachers who were working with her. They, in turn, gained a valuable insight into how best to employ the writing methods of a professional poet in future lessons. Having Rose there gave some staff the opportunity to step back and reflect on the working practice of their pupils. One teacher felt that she came out feeling that she knew her group a lot better.

Rose provided the teachers with a ‘toolkit’ of poetry writing exercises; a considerable number of students have said they will now read more poetry; creative writing by pupils may be read out in assemblies; there is a possibility of a creative writing group being established outside of school, with Internet connections being made with other young writers and schools that have writers-in-residence; creative writing sessions for teachers may be introduced, as well as regular visits from writers to work with pupils.

As this residency has proved, there is much for writers, teachers and pupils to gain from working creatively together: “That poetry can be used as a vehicle for so much feeling and thought as well as story-telling or description, will I hope stay with them. That poetry can be a safe and strong place in which to put ‘unsafe’ expressions of the self may well be of great use, beyond the classroom.”