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Activity 8 First impressions of poetry

Allow about 20 minutes

In order to complete the tasks in the questions below, you will need to

make notes, so this is an early opportunity to practise your note-taking

techniques. Note taking involves writing in sequence the points you want

to remember. You can do this by writing sentences, phrases, lists of

words, bullet points and so on. This is called linear note taking, and as

with all note taking the aim is to record the most important points. There

are two key aims to making these kinds of notes: they should be brief?

and they should be clear.

1? How do you feel about beginning to study poetry? What is your

experience of poetry so far? Write down a few words that describe

your feelings at this stage.

2? Do you have a favourite poem or song lyric that you can remember?

Or is there a short piece, such as an advertising jingle, that sticks in

your mind? Why do you like (or dislike) you’re chosen text? Why do

you think your chosen text is memorable?

Comment

Different people will obviously feel differently about question 1. You might

have written words like ‘excited’. Or perhaps you used words like

‘worried’; many students feel that poetry is the most difficult type of

creative writing to understand, so don’t be concerned if this is your initial

response. In the process of working through the material in this chapter,

such anxieties will be addressed and hopefully relieved. It’s good to

make a record of your feelings at this stage as this will give you

something to refer back to once you have begun to engage with the

material that follows.

Here are the answers that one student gave in response to question 2.

I remember the line, ‘Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop

to drink’ – though I don’t know where these words come from.

I like this line.   It   makes me think   of   being on a boat,   in   the

middle of the sea.

It is harder to...