"I
didn't know I was so clever"
Images and
metaphor
All poetry
is about love and loss. It's hard to tell someone what it
feels like to be in love, how you feel when your lover
has abandoned you, or when someone close to you has died.
Poetry exists to fill this gap in communication, and it
does it by likening the emotion to something else,
something concrete. Poetry
deals in images. This simple exercise introduces
metaphors, using the familiar shape of a family tree to
make connections, and show relationships. Almost any
subject will do, but I recommend that sessions be themed:
In this way, everything you do feeds into the theme, and,
though exercises are by their nature prescriptive -
kick-starts - the theme will open up the possibility of
individual poems springing spontaneously out of the
workshops. Thus, any number of exercises - a list poem, a
"recipe" poem (using another poet's work, as in
Jumpstart [by Cliff Yates]), haiku or
other word or syllable count poems, poems based on
stories (do build up a bank of stories: they never fail
to engage), will deepen the experience of the students
and lead to their accessing their own voice.
Choose a
title - a single noun. Write it in the middle of the
board/sheet of paper/whatever. Imagine it is the
grandfather/mother of a family, and draw up the next line
to name each of the children, in the manner of a family
tree. Ask the students What else in the world is like
a tree? Their answers must be common nouns (not
abstracts: if they offer you an abstract, point out that
you can't see/hear/feel it, and what you want is
something tangible.)
When
you've got a line of "children", choose one -
or ask them to choose one - to show a new generation of
metaphors.
You now
have two generations of images.
Tell the
students to think of a particular tree, one they know;
and then to stare at the family of images without
thinking, and do the same yourself. When you're
ready, get someone to write down what you say, as you do
the first poem out loud.
The
tree is an open book,
its pages lifting and turning in the wind.
It is the ghost of a forest,
a shape-shifter invading the playground.
The tree is a green cloud on a concrete sea.
Ask your
amanuensis to read your poem aloud, and point to the
metaphor words as they occur. (Don't allow the students
to see your poem.)
The
students will home in on those Images that are right for
them. Suggest that they use the same pattern as above,
i.e. line 1, The tree is...., line 2 It is... ,
and they're off!
Some
students will find among the images in the family tree, a
subject which is different, which matches their mood.
(Thus, one might write a poem beginning "The shadow
is... etc.) Don't suggest that they do this: just let it
happen.
(*The
quotation is from a teacher attending a workshop at
Birmingham Botanical Gardens. All the images used in the
example are taken from workshops. The chosen tree was an
oak tree in the school Playground.)
© Eleanor
Cooke
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