One of the most wonderful things about poetry writing in the
English classroom is the way that direct translations of phrases and metaphors
from the learners’ L1 produce such fresh results. Tonight was our
second poetry translation workshop and there are some beautiful pieces of work
in the making. I hope to be able to share some next week.
To ease the learners into the session we watched a couple of
poets perform their work on the Poetry Station: http://www.thepoetrychannel.org.uk/
John Hegley’s Rowena is a hilarious poem about
unrequited love, and the humour was not lost on the class. Before watching the performance, I wrote down five or six words from the poem
and asked the class to generate as many rhyming words as they possibly could.
They did well with this, and even managed to predict some of the words which
occur in the poem itself. After our first viewing, I asked the
learners to listen out for some of the insults Rowena dishes out to her
boyfriend. They did well here, getting the “dead below and the above the belt”
one as well as the particularly nasty “you’re thicker than your glasses”. I have never used the poetry station before,
but it’s an excellent resource which I will certainly be returning to before
long.
We then got down to the business of
continuing with poetry translation. Many of the learners had
already translated their poems' basic meaning. They then began to play around
with the words, adding rhyme and reading aloud to listen to the rhythm, before sharing
their work with their designated PP (Poet Partner). This part of the lesson
worked really well, and I was heartened to overhear some really constructive
and thoughtful discussion between partners.
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