Canterbury Festival Schools’ Poetry Competition 2013
Teaching Resource Sheet for Secondary Schools
The theme for this year’s poetry Competition is “My Hometown” which incorporates not
only the place, but also the stories, lives and memories created there.
The aim of this theme is to encourage students to think about their hometown
imaginatively. They might like to write a descriptive poem about a special place in their
hometown, or about an event or life experience that has happened there. Living in a city as
steeped in history as Canterbury, some students might like to go back in time and write a
historical poem about events in Canterbury during a different era. Others may not take
Canterbury as their subject at all, but might prefer to write about their country/place of
origin or even an imaginary place where they would prefer to live, or somewhere from a
book they have read.
Working Starting Points:
1) Ten Pence Story by Simon Armitage
Without telling the students what the object is in this poem, read it aloud and invite them to
shout out when they have guessed who/what perspective the poem is written from!
In Ten Pence Story, the poet imagines what it would be like to be a coin, and since the poem
is written from the perspective of the coin it is an excellent example of personification.
How does the poet do this so successfully? The poem is written in the first person, and the
coin (an inanimate object) is given thoughts, feelings and opinions.
Lead on to a discussion about the landmarks in Canterbury, for example the Cathedral,
Westgate Towers, City Walls, churches, river Stour etc. Students might like to choose one of
these landmarks and write a poem from its own perspective. For example, the Westgate
Towers might be annoyed and grumpy that they have been driven through, hit by cars and
buses, eventually closed and now opened again! Other historic sites might fear that they
were once so important, but may soon be forgotten. An alternative would be to write from
the perspective of a coin on a journey around Canterbury.
Ten Pence Story
by Simon Armitage
Out of the melting pot, into the mint;
next news I was loose change for a Leeds pimp,
burning a hole in his skin-tight pocket
till he tipped a busker by the precinct.
Not the most ceremonious release
for a fresh faced coin cutting its teeth.
But that's my point: if you're poorly bartered
you're scuppered before you've even started.
My lowest ebb was a seven month spell
spent head down in a wishing well,
half eclipsed by an oxidized tuppence
which impressed me with its green circumference.
When they fished me out I made a few phone calls,
fed a few meters, hung round the pool halls.
I slotted in well, but all that vending
blunted my edges and did my head in.
Once I came within an ace of the end
on the stern of a North Sea Ferry, when
some half-cut, ham-fisted cockney tossed me
up into the air and almost dropped me
and every transaction flashed before me
like a time lapse autobiography.
Now, just the thought of travel by water
lifts the serrations around my border.
Some day I know I'll be bagged up and sent
to that knacker's yard for the over-spent
to be broken, boiled, unmade and replaced,
for my metals to go their separate ways...
which is sad. All coins have dreams. Some castings
from my own batch, I recall, were hatching
an exchange scam on the foreign market
and some inside jobs on one arm bandits.
My own ambition? Well, that was simple:
to be flipped in Wembley's centre circle,
to twist, to turn, to hang like a planet,
to touch down on that emerald carpet.
Those with faith in the system say 'don't quit,
bide your time, if you're worth it, you'll make it.'
But I was robbed, I was badly tendered.
I could have scored. I could have contended.
2) Upon Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth versus London by William Blake
Read the two poems. Both are about London. Can the students decide which poem is
portraying London in a positive light, and which portrays it negatively?
Notes on William Wordsworth’s London: William Wordsworth was one of the major poets
of the Romantic movement in Britain, and his poetry is generally focused on nature and
man's relationship with the natural environment. The poem is a sonnet – a form most
widely adopted in love poetry, which reflects Wordsworth’s feelings for his subject matter.
Wordsworth is suggesting that his experience of London is beautiful; beyond anything that
could occur naturally. This comes across because of the positive and beautiful language
used.
Notes on William Blake’s London: William Blake was a poet and artist who often focused on
work of a religious nature. He rejected established religion for various reasons. One of the
main ones was the failure of the established Church to help children in London who were
forced to work. Blake lived and worked in the capital, so was arguably well placed to write
clearly about the conditions people who lived there faced. The poem describes a journey
around London, offering a glimpse of what the speaker sees as the terrible conditions faced
by the inhabitants of the city. Child labour, restrictive laws and prostitution are all explored
in the poem.
This feeling is portrayed to the reader through the use of negative and “ugly” language.
Task:
Taking Canterbury as the subject, set the task for student to write either a positive or
negative poem describing the city. Focus on the language used, and the vivid descriptions.
Students might like to consider using similes to help explain just “how” beautiful or terrible
something is.
Upon Westminster Bridge
William Wordsworth
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
London
William Blake
I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.
3) Eunice by John Betjeman
Betjeman’s Eunice is about a lady about to board a train at Tunbridge Wells bound for
London. Notice how the voice in the poem describes the things that Eunice will miss about
home in Kent when she goes back to work in London.
Task: What do you miss about your home? Perhaps you’ve lived in Kent all your life and
can’t imagine leaving, or perhaps you’ve already left the place that you consider to be your
home and you already know firsthand what it’s like to feel home sick and to miss a place.
Maybe you associate a place with a person and you’d like to write about that experience.
Not all poems have to rhyme, but can you find the rhymes in Eunice, and can you write a
poem that rhymes as well?
EUNICE
by John Betjeman
With her latest roses happily encumbered
Tunbridge Wells Central takes her from the night,
Sweet second bloomings frost has faintly umbered
And some double dahlias waxy red and white.
Shut again till April stands her little hutment
Peeping over daisies Michaelmas and mauve,
Lock'd is the Elsan in its brick abutment
Lock'd the little pantry, dead the little stove.
Keys with Mr. Groombridge, but nobody will take them
To her lonely cottage by the lonely oak,
Potatoes in the garden but nobody to bake them,
Fungus in the living room and water in the coke.
I can see her waiting on this chilly Sunday
For the five forty (twenty minutes late),
One of many hundreds to dread the coming Monday
To fight with influenza and battle with her weight.
Tweed coat and skirt that with such anticipation
On a merry spring time a friend had trimm'd with fur,
Now the friend is married and, oh desolation,
Married to the man who might have married her.
High in Onslow Gardens where the soot flakes settle
An empty flat is waiting her struggle up the stair
And when she puts the wireless on, the heater and the kettle
It's cream and green and cosy, but home is never there.
Home's here in Kent and how many morning coffees
And hurried little lunch hours of planning will be spent
Through the busy months of typing in the office
Until the days are warm enough to take her back to Kent.
4) Welling by Dan Simpson
This year’s Canterbury Laureate Dan Simpson wrote this poem about his hometown. It
describes the change of seasons using three senses: smell, sight and touch. It goes on to talk
about the feelings this sensation evokes.
Task: pick a small detail about your hometown you experience with one of your senses (a
sight, a smell, a taste, a sound, a touch). Describe that detail and expand on it. How does it
make you feel?
Welling
Welling’s smelling good today
that wet-on-concrete smell
the scent of freshly fallen rain
the streets seem to wish you well.
They hope for brighter days ahead
a spring shower turned to sun
pavement perfume reminding me
the winter season’s done.
The day’s grown up and getting long
the evening pulls away
a fire sky looks over me
at the close of every day.
The town feels slightly happier
there’s a tingling on my skin
the atmosphere is lightening
as we welcome summer in.
Welling’s smelling good today
that wet-on-concrete smell
the scent of freshly fallen rain
the streets seem to wish you well.
5) In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound
In Ezra Pound’s very short and very famous Imagist poem, he presents a strong and striking
comparison between a crowd of people and an image of nature. He described this poem as
an ‘equation’ – the semicolon works as an equals sign.
Task: write your own version(s) of this equation-poem by taking a moment or scene from
your hometown and comparing it to something completely different. One effective way to
do this is to take something manmade or artificial and compare it to something natural.
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
6) Block City by Robert Louis Stevenson
RLS images a city built out of everyday objects around him. It’s a childhood game, using the
imagination to create a landscape from what’s around you.
Task: pick a location from your home (eg. kitchen, front room, garden, bathroom) and
imagine the objects forming your entire town or city.
What are you able to build with your blocks?
Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
But I can be happy and building at home.
Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea,
There I'll establish a city for me:
A kirk and a mill and a palace beside,
And a harbour as well where my vessels may ride.
Great is the palace with pillar and wall,
A sort of a tower on top of it all,
And steps coming down in an orderly way
To where my toy vessels lie safe in the bay.
This one is sailing and that one is moored:
Hark to the song of the sailors on board!
And see on the steps of my palace, the kings
Coming and going with presents and things!
7) We Are Poets by Leeds Young Authors
Watch the video here – a poem where each line begins ‘I come from…’
http://vimeo.com/54291012
Task: Write some sentences that each start with “I come from,” that are influenced by your
experiences of living in your hometown.