The Magic Box

A really good way of getting children to write their own poems is to show them a range of models which they can use as a springboard for their own ideas and voices. It's not the only way of getting them writing, but it can be a start, especially if you are nervous about teaching poetry. In practice this means reading as widely as possible the poets being published for the children's market today. Not all of them are going to last (will all the novelists?), but many of them are excellent.

One of these is Kit Wright. He can be funny, serious and moving, and, sometimes, all three, in the space of a single poem. The poem of his I want to direct you to is 'The Magic Box'. He originally published it in Cat Among the Pigeons (Penguin), but you can also find it in several anthologies and teachers books, including The Word Party (Macmillan,1999), Poetry (Macmillan English, 1991), and the Poetry Society's very own Jumpstart (Poetry Society, 1999) by Cliff Yates.

Here is the poem:

THE MAGIC BOX, by Kit Wright

I will put in the box

the swish of a silk sari on a summer night,
fire from the nostrils of a Chinese dragon,
the tip of a tongue touching a tooth.

I will put in the box

a snowman with a rumbling belly
a sip of the bluest water from Lake Lucerene,
a leaping spark from an electric fish.

I will put into the box

three violet wishes spoken in Gujarati,
the last joke of an ancient uncle,
and the first smile of a baby.

I will put into the box

a fifth season and a black sun,
a cowboy on a broomstick
and a witch on a white horse.

My box is fashioned from ice and gold and steel,
with stars on the lid and secrets in the corners.
Its hinges are the toe joints of dinosaurs.

I shall surf in my box
on the great high-rolling breakers of the wild Atlantic,
then wash ashore on a yellow beach
the colour of the sun.

'The Magic Box' from CAT AMONG THE PIGEONS by Kit Wright
(Viking Kestrel, 1987) Copyright Kit Wright, 1987.

'The Magic Box' is a rich and suggestive poem, full of marvellous textures, sights and sounds which you would not normally be able to put into a box of any sort. But, this being a magic box, anything can, and will, go in. Children understand this straight away. Having said that, I think it's worth reading out loud twice to your class before asking them to comment on it because the language is so full of exciting possibilities.

In my experience of teaching it the stanza containing the subversively muddled 'fifth season and black sun' provokes most initial comment, which is a good starting point for a discussion on poetry's ability to make us look at the world with fresh eyes.

You can use the poem to provoke questions, the answers to which become the poems the children write or speak for themselves. With a Reception or Year 1 class, make the poem in front of them with a piece of shared writing. Questions to ask include:

What sort of sights would you put in your box?
What about sounds, smells and textures?
What sort of foods would go in?
And colours and weather?
What sort of dreams go in, and what sort of feelings?
Are there things from the natural world, like rivers and mountains?
Perhaps it has a window in it, or a door leading to somewhere else?

What is the box made of and where will you keep it seem to be crucial questions, perhaps best kept for the end.

Sometimes it's a good idea to ask your class to invent a different kind of box altogether, using the same questions to bring it to life. These might include: the bad box, the dream box, the happy box, the scared box, the rude box, the secret box, the hidden box, the adventure box and so on.

With Years 2 & 3 I feed the questions one at a time, with everyone writing in their own books. With years 4-6 I ask them to list in the top right hand corner of their page before they begin writing:

an animal
something impossible (eg a river flowing backwards)
a kind of music
something they say in the mornings

At various points I ask them to insert these into the poem they are writing: they can help ground a poem which has become too abstract in concrete images, or provide new inspiration for one which has got stuck.

With Years 5 & 6 it helps to have a copy of the poem in front of them as they write, because by that age children will be mostly writing for themselves and may prefer to use questions about the box's contents as prompts rather than raw material.

As I hope these poems show, the main thing is to keep reminding the children to be as precise as they can at every turn. Press here for poems by a range of young writers.

NEXT>>

Y3 T3 T15
- To write poetry that uses sound to create effects, eg onomatopoeia,
alliteration, distinctive rhythms

Y4 T1 T14
- To write poems based on personal or imagined experience, linked to
poems read

Y4 T2 T4
- To understand how the use of expressive and descriptive language
can for example create moods, arouse expectations, build tension,
describe attitudes or emotions

Y4 T2 T5
- To understand the use of figurative language in poetry and prose
- Locate use of simile

Y5 T1 T16
- To convey feelings, reflections or moods in a poem through the
careful choice of words and phrases

Y5 T1 T17
- To write metaphors from original ideas or from similes

Y6 T2 T3
- To recognise how poets manipulate words:
   - For their quality of sound
   - For their connotations
   - For multiple layers of meaning, eg through figurative language, ambiguity

key stage 2	· poetry lesson
Anthony Wilson

Anthony Wilson

The Magic Box