The Power of Poetry - Poetry by Heart

Family| Relationships

Why learn a poem when it is always just a mouse click away, along with thousands more? Isn’t learning poems an old-fashioned chore forced on reluctant schoolchildren in the past?

Why learn a poem when it is always just a mouse click away, along with thousands more? Isn’t learning poems an old-fashioned chore forced on reluctant school children in the past?

James James Morrison MorrisonWeatherby George Dupree

Took great care of his mother,though he was only three.

James James said to his mother,“Mother,” he said, said he,

“You must never go down to theend of the town if you don’tgo down with me!

When my daughter was about three we had huge fun chanting this little AA Milne poem called Disobedience (and there are plenty more verses, believe me) as we walked about together. It’s just right for tramping along to. She learnt it as easily as my son learnt the impossibly complicated names of the more obscure dinosaurs, and sometimes, if I just began to say it, it would distract her from a potential misery and cause her to forget all about it and join in with delight. I recently reminded her of this (she is now a teacher in her twenties, by the way) and she immediately grinned, and we chanted the whole thing together, following it up with The Tale of Custard the Dragon. We could have done ten more, easily! Perhaps twenty or thirty. When I asked her why she had enjoyed them so much, she said that it was something to do with rhyme, rhythm and structure, which was comforting and fun to share, but it was also a bit mysterious, and made pictures in her head. Why was James James Morrison’s mother so vague? What did King John have to do with it? Why was the little boy in charge?

When she was about 9, she would sometimes draw on her poems to help her sleep. By this time we had added some more grown-up ones, like The Highwayman (Alfred Noyes), with its rhythm of galloping hooves, (my son loved this one, too) and we soon went on to add poems by Charles Causley (By St Thomas’ Water and Reservoir Street), AE Houseman’s Is my Team Ploughing?, Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and all sorts of random others, old and new, funny and strange, that caught her fancy. I had kept my much-loved Golden Treasury of Poetry from my childhood, and she devoured it in delight. Now she says that those poems, which she still carries around in her head, are a link back to the person she was when she learned them – the toddler, the little girl, the adolescent, and a rather good poet herself. No-one ever asked her to learn them – she just did – but there is hot debate about whether children should be made to learn poetry by heart in school.

I reckon that being encouraged to love a poem by hearing it many, many times, and being able to join in, is a great way to go, and obviously better than forced rote learning. Just about every 6−year-old I taught seemed to enjoy it, and often had fun playing with the structures and ideas and making their own versions, using patterns, techniques and vocabulary which became part of their language store, to dip into and use. You know that your child is learning vocabulary, language skills, memory skills, grammar, and are thinking about imagery, and perhaps even big abstract ideas, when they learn a poem. Your child, I hope, will mainly just know that it is interesting and fun. But what else might you get out of having a stock of poetry in your head?

I find that to memorise a poem is to gradually inhabit it and understand it in a way which is rarely possible when you just read it a couple of times or hear it once. On the whole, poetry requires attention. Some poems are a bit difficult – they hold clues, almost like a cryptic crossword. Knowing a poem is more interactive than you might think, and its pleasures are enhanced. Even one chosen almost at random (I’ve tried this) usually makes me like it very much. Learning by heart becomes learning with heart. You carry the poem with you wherever you go – it has become a part of you and, in a way, you own it. You might miss nuance as a seven-year-old, and get it later, when the moment comes for you to pull a few lines out of your head in response to something that has made you pay attention.

Learning a poem is easy and fun. If you have ever sung nursery rhymes with them, you have already made a start. Here are some suggestions to get you going with a few family poems:

■ Choose something amusing with great rhyme and rhythm for your first one. It could be in story form, such as Each Peach Pear Plum (Ahlberg), or a Dr Seuss story like The Cat in the Hat, or a verse such as Disobedience (A A Milne). There are numerous lists of possibilities online.

■ You could try one you liked as a child. At least make sure that you like the poem too, or you will lose enthusiasm yourself!

■ Get (or borrow from the library) a simple collection of children’s poems and read a few. Ask your child which ones they like and choose one of those.

■ If it’s long (such as Custard the Dragon) get to know a couple of verses first.

■ Don’t set a task of learning a poem. Just say it to your child and see whether they like it. If they do, say it lots – every day. In the car is a good place, and so is walking along, folding the laundry, washing the dishes and tidying up. They are very likely to start joining in and will soon find themselves knowing it by heart.

■ Use an expressive voice! You can ham up amusing poems as much as you like. Have a written version on the wall if your child likes the idea, or a picture which goes with the words. You or your child could always draw one!

Return to Kirrin by Suzy and Neil Howlett

Frost’s poem is well-known and one that I have have found almost everyone over seven to enjoy and learn easily. Try it when you want to move on to something more “grown-up”. If you like, just use the first and last verse. You can explore the middle verses at a later stage (and might even spot the clever rhyme pattern).

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I thinkI know | His house is in the villagethough; | He will not see me stopping here | To watch his woods fill upwith snow. | My little horse must think itqueer without a farmhouse near| Between the woods and frozen lake | The darkest evening of the year. | He gives his harness bells a shake |To ask if there is some mistake.The only other sound’s the sweep | Of easy wind and downy flake.| The woods are lovely, dark anddeep,| But I have promises to keep, | And miles to go before I sleep, | And miles to go before I sleep.

Suzy Howlett is a retired teacher, and author of Return to Kirrin – a witty and nostalgic novel for grown-ups who enjoyed Enid Blyton’s Famous Five when they were children and want to meet them as adults and parents in a new and scandalous adventure. Available from The Hunting Raven and Amazon, paperback and Kindle.