Poetry is a wonderful thing
April 24, 2010 5:30 pm Book AdviceIs it not? Plenty of people ‘don’t get poetry’ or remember too much how it is taught in schools, and just the idea makes them shudder.
However, it is at this that I beg to differ. I adore poetry, and I always have. I trained to be an English teacher and I am still disgusted at the way it is taught in schools.
Schools teach people to destroy them, to tear them apart word by word until it is not even looked at as a whole piece any more. They are told that poets always choose every singe word intentionally, and that there are always at least three or four meanings to everything.
This is not the case. Yes, poets choose their words very carefully, but a poem can be a bit of fun, it can be a laugh, or a tongue-in-cheek comment. It doesn’t have to be about flowers, and sexuality, and innocence and growth and new life all at the same time. It may be, but that doesn’t mean it definitely is.
I remember once being told about what Shakespeare was thinking when he wrote one of his sonnets, and questioning the teacher about it. She said that we know that from studies and hundreds of years of learning about it. Rubbish! We don’t know what he was thinking, we don’t know how intentional every word was, and we don’t know what he thought of his social messages.
So, after a long-winded rant, my moral is this: ignore all the teaching you’ve had, and just read poetry for the poems. Read Philip Larkin, Paul Durcan, Vicki Feaver and Jo Shapcott if you want poetry that isn’t stuffy, overly worded tripe.
Go on, give it a go. Poetry rocks.