Teach Primary Issue 19.6

teachwire.net/primary 83 Pay attention to space, zoom in on words and lean into the light to show pupils that they already knowmuch more about poetry than they think... T he first time I read a novel-in-verse was not, in fact, the first time I read a novel-in-verse. I thought it was. I had never seen a whole book written in poetry before; had never seen a book utilise so little space (or so I thought at the time). But the more I read the more comfortable and familiar I found it. It felt, almost immediately, absolutely perfect and absolutely right . I realised that I had encountered verse in my reading before, in many forms, I just hadn’t recognised it. I’d read picture books, narrative poetry, even graphic novels. I’d read books that used space and shape in interesting ways. I just hadn’t recognised it for what it was. Verse can seem intimidating. It is poetry, after all. But verse is remarkably accessible; it’s designed to be. So, how do we overcome this initial worry? How do we teach verse? One question I get asked quite often is ‘does it have to rhyme?’ and the answer is no, it doesn’t have to. It can, if the author has the patience, skill and desire to make it rhyme, but it’s not a requirement. Rhyme, to be oh-so-honest with you, is difficult for a writer and wonderful for a reader. It can help guide a reader, it can make the reading experience extra pleasant because you know what’s coming, A will rhyme with B, and C will rhyme with D and so on and so on. There’s an intrinsic rhythm; there’s a predictability and a level of comfort. So what do we do when faced with a book made entirely of interconnected poetry that doesn’t rhyme? How do we take away the totally understandable impulse to say, “This isn’t for me”, close the book and walk away? Space to breathe For me, reading verse clicked the second I stopped wondering why they used so little of the page. The truth is that verse doesn’t only use a little bit of the page – it uses every millimetre – it just doesn’t feel the need to fill it with words. The white space is where we rest, it’s where we breathe. It is where the unsaid hides and where we can find it if we want to. If you choose to see the white space as everything else, the page becomes easier to understand. My favourite way to show and explain this is to give readers a paragraph of text (usually something they may be familiar with or are likely to have read already) and ask them to turn it into verse using line breaks and white space. I ask them to think about which words or lines they feel are the most important, which deserve extra space because they carry extra weight, which the writer might want to rush past, and which are so important they should be surrounded by white space, so they stand alone. Everyone ends up with a different piece of verse in the end, despite using the exact same chunk of prose. This exercise is my favourite, because it shows readers (and writers) that they FREE the verse MEG GREHAN www.teachwire.net | 83 T E ACH RE AD I NG & WR I T I NG