Poetry and Experience · Mon Jun 26, 18:52 by Eleri Straker
I like teaching poetry. I love the precision and cleverness of it.
The other day, in the department staff room, we were discussing the ‘other cultures’ poetry we have to teach and comparing which poems we preferred to teach. I particularly like a poem called “Vultures”, which is a reflection on the nature of evil, and “What were they like?” which contemplates the effects of the Vietnam War. A couple of younger teachers said that they found these poems particularly difficult to teach, as they didn’t feel that they understood them.
You might think that the reason for this is their lack of years and experience, but I think there’s more to it than this.
Last year, I was supporting another teacher while she taught these poems and I was dismayed to see how little she understood or knew about both World War 2 and the Vietnam War (knowledge vital to the understanding of these poems). There are limited notes provided with these poems, enough to give the teacher a very basic knowledge of the wars, but not enough to really understand. In order to really get a handle on these two poems, you have to do your research – you have to understand what Napalm does (knowing about the famous picture of Kim Phuk, the little girl running with her back on fire, helps), what Agent Orange is…You have to know about the Biafran conflict and the Holocaust. You have to be able to answer the questions that the kids will inevitably ask. I’m no expert on wars, but I do make sure that I’ve done the research so that I can make the poems as alive as possible for my students.
I was teaching “What were they like?” to my lovely year 9s the other day and I spent a good twenty minutes explaining the reasons behind America’s involvement in the Vietnam war, what Napalm does to the human body and the effect of the fear of Communism on a country. It meant that when we read the poem, the kids understood the references. What really impressed me happened when we looked at the line “when the bombs smashed those mirrors.”
I was rabbiting on about the use of metaphor when one of my students suggested that an alternative reading of the metaphor was that the mirror possibly reflected America’s attitude to the war being violently changed. I don’t personally believe that this is the meaning of the line, but that doesn’t matter, as it’s a brilliantly imaginative response based on the knowledge she was given about the war. And that really is what is important in teaching poetry. We have to give the students the tools with which to work. And this means that we have to do ours, and do it properly.
