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Group Conceit Poem
Working
on a group 'conceit' poem with a Year 6 class
This
is really an experience in working with metaphor, but one that extends
through the poem. It can be useful to develop writing and get groups
thinking more deeply about images, especially if they tend toward
simple rhyme most of the time.
I
used a flip chart and a variety of coloured pens to jot down lines,
and put in bits of redrafting later. We tended to talk over lines,
read them out loud, vote on best words, etc. for quite a while before
a line was jotted down.
Introduction
Talk over the idea of a conceit poem as writing about one thing
entirely in terms of another. I gave them a few examples, eg. the moon
as a football - kicked around the sky, 'off-side!', etc., then
collected some ideas from them, 'a ... as a ...'. They voted on the
image they wanted to work on and chose a hedgehog as a conker. I
reminded them that whatever they wrote had to fit the 'conker' image
throughout and we kept an eye on this as we developed ideas.
Development
I decided to use a skeleton structure for stanzas to hang further
questioning on.
1)
What is it? What does it look like?
2) Where is it?
3) What is it doing?
4) Expand this to use senses, eg. touch, feeling
5) A final action to round off the conceit
Round
up: gathered and read scattered(!) sheets,
changed the odd word here and there. I wasn't seeing them
again, so I typed up and sent the poem on to them.
The
poem
Hedgehog...
like a
giant conker case,
hard, brown and spiky,
its nose a straight, wet stalk.
It lies in
the churchyard's long grass
among crispy leaves, all burgundy
yellow and gold.
The leaves rustle.
It inches
its way
slowly - slowly- slowly
rolling its prickly shell
out into the open.
It finds a
patch of warm sun,
turns onto its back,
opens its spikes
to sunbathe its belly
its soft, silky insides
in the afternoon heat.
A fat slug
slides by.
The conker flips
right side up,
cracks open its shell
and devours it whole.
Supplementary
material for Working on a group 'conceit' poem
Ideas
for 'image pairs' which come from the pupils are the most likely
to match their experience and ability. However, it helps to have a few
possibilities up your sleeve. You may have to only give the main
subject (e.g. 'avalanche') for them to come up with matches. Examples:
(sure you could add to them!)
avalanche
as snow leopard / trolley of supermarket shopping as pirate's
treasure hoard / town pigeons as business men / hailstorm as storm of
bullets / football team as medieval knights - or the game as a
medieval
battle / group of old ladies as cauliflower heads / leaves as disco
dancers
Poems
to illustrate the idea of extended metaphors
From 'A
Year Full of Poems', OUP, ISBN 0-19-276149-8, 1996
'The
Wind'
'Have You Heard the Sun Singing'
'I Am the Rain'
'The Harvest Moon' - first verse, 'Leaves in the Yard', 'City Rain'
(weather is a common experience and usually gets ideas for
comparisons
going)
From 'A
Fifth Poetry Book', OUP, last reprinted 1992,ISBN 0 19 916053 8
'Sunset'
'Summer Full Moon'
The
following poems are in books now out of print but you may have them
in school, or your local library may be able to trace a copy:
From 'Shadow
Dance: poems of the night' (coll. Adrian Rumble, Puffin)
'Flashlight'
From 'Enjoying
Poetry' (a poetry teaching source book, Macmillan Education)
'Concrete
Mixers'
'The Frowning Cliff'
'Voices: first book' ed. Geoffrey Summerfield, Penguin
'Fog'
(well-known Carl Sandburg poem, often anthologised)
Workshop
S1
Using
'Have You Heard the Sun Singing?' - the poem asks the question but
doesn't answer it, so it's a good jumping off point. The 'Man have you
heard it?' lines suggest modern music, and the rest gives a loud,
upbeat image of the sun. Work as a group on a more detailed 'song of
the sun' as a performer, out on the stage.
Discussion/decision
ideas:
- What
sort of singer/character do they imagine the sun to be (thinking
about the singers they know)?
- Is
it dressed for the
job?
- What's
its costume like?
- What
type of music?
- The
sun could be singing to the whole world, or to definite
creatures/people/ buildings down below. What could it be saying?
(see if they can come up some
actual words - pop song style?)
- Does
it have a backing group - what?
- Does
it sing the same song all day long, or does it change (e.g. dawn,
midday, dusk)
Once
the ideas are gathered, they can move them around into a poem, they
don't need to stick to the order they discussed them in. They might
want to use something like 'Man have you heard?', or a song line, as a
repeat link. (You could point out that poems, like pop songs, often
use
repeat lines)
Workshop
S2
Using
the first verse of Ted Hughes' 'The Harvest Moon'.
This
uses the image of 'the flame-red moon, harvest moon ... gently
bouncing / a vast balloon'. Have some fun discussing carrying the poem
on with the moon as a balloon.
Ideas:
make a list of everything they know about a balloon (feel, shape
- not always round! - different ways in which it can move, different
places they've seen an 'escaped' balloon, etc). Now tell them their
balloon/moon is going to move off into any zany sort of journey they
like.
- Where
could it go? (Try not to get bogged down in a traditional
rural scene - which is why it might be as well for this idea not
to read
them the rest of the poem. Refer back to places in their list -
but it
could be anywhere)
- What
will happen to it? Remember, the moon moves
by itself, but a balloon needs something to move it. It might meet
animate or inanimate things.
- How
does its journey end? Compare the usual ends of a balloon and a
harvest moon. Throughout, try to use your questioning to keep the
balloon image of the moon going as well as they can.
Workshop
S3
The
poems need enlarging/duplicating so that the lines can be cut into
strips which can be mixed up. Tell groups that the lines of the poems
have been mixed up and they have to sort them out. The clues are that
one poem is talking about the London Eye as if it is a space station
and
other one as if an insect (guess which one at end) is a night time
burglar. Giving the first line and the number of lines per poem helps.
The
workshop can be done in groups of four/five, with the group
first sorting the strips into which poem they think they belong to.
The
group can then split in two to sort the lines into a poem, getting
back
together to discuss hitches, compare results, etc.
This
task isn't only about gathering images. Chopping up poems, sorting and
shifting lines is what poets do. And it doesn't matter if their line
order exactly matches the poet's; the value is in discussing choices
and why they
made.
Encourage
reading out loud as they sort, something else poets do to check how
lines sound together. It helps to familiarise yourself with the poems
so that you can give a discrete 'nudge' or a helpful question if a
group is stuck.
An alternative is to work on just one poem, perhaps as a more 'led'
activity at the end, discussing the images / what's going on / adding
to the experience with the children's ideas.
|
|
| The
London Eye
I
am a spinning plate of
gleaming silver metal,
shatter-proof glass.
I whi-i-sh and whoosh through space,
sending soft lullabies back to base.
I am Earth Watcher, my spacemen
recording images from on high.
Their mouths are wide
with the wonder of it all.
Their imaginations fly.
But I am held
by my one design fault:
huge tethered legs
sunk in a river bank. |
|
The
Flying Burglar
He's
out at dead of night, dodging
between this shadow and that.
His nerves quiver.
He looks for a chink of light,
the smallest crack.
He's found it. He's in
How careless
to leave the goodies
heaped on the bed.
He zones in, strikes,
and stashes away
his first sackful
of warm blood.
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© Pat
Leighton 2000/2001
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