Development in the Writing of
Poetry
Anthony Wilson
University of Exeter
a.c.wilson@exeter.ac.uk
Aims
• To report on a small scale piece of
research on poetry writing pedagogy
• To set out the findings from this in the
current (UK) context (Ofsted, 2007)
• To discuss implications for further practice
for teachers and other educators regarding
poetry and progression
A little bit about me…
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Poet
Creative writing tutor/ Writer in schools
Teacher
Teacher educator
Researcher
• http://education.exeter.ac.uk/staff_details.p
hp?user=acwilson
With Seamus Heaney… an already
achieved, uniquely precocious
maturity is being deepened into a
tragic voice. He has already left the
point at which his contemporaries are
now arriving.
Clive James, Quotation from The Observer on a book blurb
Poetry’s ‘mixed status’
• Centuries-old arguments (Daiches, 1981;
Parini, 2008)
• Capitalist privileging acquisition over
contemplation (Dunn, 2001)
• The language we use to describe it: ‘If you
dribble past five defenders, it isn't called
sheer prose’ (Tom Leonard, 2006)
• Untested and unaccounted for?
Poetry and Writing Theory
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Flower and Hayes (1980, 1981)
Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987)
Kellogg (1994)
Sharples (1999)
• Poetry as ‘knowledge transformation’?
Theoretical Background
Constructivism
• Bruner (1986): proficiency
• Vygotsky (1978): ZPD
• Harvard: ‘the gradual and sensitive
withdrawal of the regulatory role’ (Harvard,
1996: 47).
Theoretical Background
Poetry and Creativity
• ‘poetry-writing-friendly classroom’ (Rosen, in
Barrs and Rosen, 1997: 4, author’s italics)
• ‘memorable speech’ : Auden (in Mendelson,
1996: 105)
• Poetry as both ‘everyday’ and a separate
language (Koch, 1998: 19).
• ‘possibility thinking’ (Craft, 2005: 19)
• ‘over-inclusive’ thinking Andreasen and Powers’
(1974): concepts or spaces ‘coded as separate
by most people [are] treated as belonging
together’ (Cropley, 2001: 38)
Cognitive demands of poetry
Poetry writing is difficult
• Unlearning ‘rules’ of prose
• Learning then unlearning models and
forms in National Strategy
• Limited ‘schemas’ of poetry
• ‘Resorting’ to rhyme (Gardner, 2006)
Methodology
ESRC-funded doctoral study on teaching poetry writing at
Key Stage 2:
• 18 month period of teaching a class of children aged 1011 (Year 5 and Year 6, in the UK)
• Purposes: to illuminate the poetry writing processes of
young children, as well as the pedagogy developed over
the project.
• Qualitative methods including: in-depth analysis of
children’s writing, semi-structured interviews, fieldwork
notes, diaries, reports and tapes of conversations, and
triangulated observations Bassey (1995).
‘Signs of progress’ in children’s
poetry writing
Progress in poetry writing
• Long-term scaffolding
• E.g. guided fantasy
• ‘Deep’/’untutored’ modelling
• Forms chosen by children
• Goals and rationales self-directed
…and therefore…
• Much harder to achieve
Things [are] going pearshaped
It looked like a music shop
A outline of 3 cello[s] in a
turquoise Blue
In a swimming pool
Like a pear in the fruit Bowl
Don’t go into a music shop with
[a] turquoise
Background
Tim, 9
The Express
Pulling out of the London termini
The engine thump’s
And the wind in my hair
Get[s] to 100
Passing nowere
Brake with air
You wack off the power handle
And Braking madly
Crossing the Border of Scotland
Pulling into Waverley station
The lady saying “This train waiting”
Resting in the Scottish city
Pulling out of the London Termini
Tim, 11
‘Signs of progress’
Dunn (2001)
• Surprising yourself; having knowledge of
what might surprise others;
• Saying what you did not know you were
going to say beforehand;
• Taking steps into the unknown
Sharples (1999): Creativity theory
• Narrowing range of possibilities at each
step
• Relaxing the constraints
• Returning again to a previous point
Habits of mind which could be called
inventive operational schema: a ‘web of
tactics’
The Feeling
It looks like a girl going on holiday for the first time.
It sounds like a scream or a shout.
It smells like a sunflower.
It feels like fluff or wool.
It tastes like a sweet strawberry.
It says ‘I can’t wait!’
It is surprised and jumpy.
Sometimes, it makes you feel sick.
Or nervous.
Camilla, 11 (February)
Slow readers going out
Bags off
I-am-go-ing-fly-ing-less-ons
I-am-go-ing-bed
I-am-go-ing-to-my-grandma’s-house-and-nevercomingback.
Bags off,
Bags off heavens up above,
Bags off soft white furry kittens,
Bags off 7:00 o’clock in the midnight,
Bags off my yellow sunflower,
Bags off,
Bags off,
Bags off pigs flying higher and higher,
Bags off babies crying,
Bags off 2:00 o’clock in the morning,
Bags off love flowers,
Bags off.
Kezia, 11 (March)
Kezia, 11 (March)
The ‘paradoxes’ of progress
• Nonsense vs. sophistication
– Chukovsky (1963)
– Whitehead (1995: 52)
• Incubation vs. spontaneity
– Wallas (in Cropley, 2001: 41)
– Weisberg (in Sternberg,1999)
• Unconscious vs. conscious
– Eliot (1933): ‘auditory imagination’
– Claxton (1997:7): ‘undermind’