Second That Emotion – Channelling Dramatic Teenage Mood Swings Into Poetry
Those mixed up feelings and dramatic behaviours amongst your Y7 and 8 learners might be driving you up the wall – but they can also inspire some amazing verse
Poetry writing is a daunting challenge for some pupils, but when its subject goes straight to the heart, passion overcomes apprehension. Emotions offer an ideal theme for poetry writing in adolescence, when they leap to new levels of intensity, across the mood spectrum. As your Year 7 and 8 pupils grapple with heightened sensitivities, they’ll welcome the chance to air them – albeit in poetic form.
This article offers a way of enabling them to do this: of making the link between feelings and words, and more specifically, between analysis of feelings, and their expression through poetry.
As teens or preteens, your youngsters will have much to feel emotional about, what with bodily changes, peer pressures, romance, exam stress, burgeoning independence and more, all now impacting on their lives.
They’ll be forming judgements on moral and social issues, too – emotive at any time, but especially so with hormones swinging. With this background, they’ll jump at the opportunity to process their tangled feelings. But this is a literary lesson, and your theme will serve a further purpose: to inspire a linguistic venture.
Start in a relaxed setting
Introduce your session in an informal setting, away from the desks, preferably in a different room with some soft furnishings and a pleasant ambience, such as the school library, common room or even staff room, perhaps. A relaxing environment will ease anxiety about the writing task to follow, and encourage uninhibited discussion of your potentially sensitive theme.
You’ll need a board for jottings and pictures. A display of cartoons, photos, paintings, or a mix, depicting expressive faces and gestures, will provide a handy starting point, stimulating interest and loosening tongues for your warm-up discussion.
Discuss
Having assembled your class in your chosen area, present your ultimate plan: to write a poem about emotions. Explain that you’re gathered here to share ideas first, and assure them that they’ll be free to write their poems however they wish, with help on hand.
Start with a light, impersonal approach, perhaps asking them to identify the emotions expressed in your pictures. What signs lead them to their interpretations?
Let your group to make some expressive faces and gestures themselves – never mind the giggles! Draw up an emotions list, including nuanced ones like anticipation, hope, surprise, embarrassment and disappointment. This basic starting point will inspire a panorama of ideas.
Guide the discussion gently towards personal feelings, perhaps setting the ball rolling with a minor experience of your own. Now invite examples of their emotion-linked experiences, serious and funny, along with causes, reactions and solutions.
Some pupils may find this too personal, so bring in some fictional characters and their emotions, from TV soaps or your class novel perhaps. Throw in some humour, too, to prevent the discussion getting heavy. You could ask: ‘Who’s scared of money spiders?’ or ‘What am I like when I’m cross?’
Stretch language
Build vocabulary as you chat, including synonyms and descriptions. If someone mentions feeling annoyed, for instance, invite alternatives, like exasperated, irritated, maddened or agitated. Some of these will reappear in their poems.
Bring in body language
Physical links will clarify concepts and stimulate poetic enrichments later, so revisit the body language touched on earlier. Ask: ‘If you were scared/excited/disappointed, how would your body react?’ or ‘What would your head, hands/spine/stomach do?’
Let everyone stand up to demonstrate – they’ll enjoy this freedom. Explore associated language simultaneously, noting suggestions on the board: sulking might involve frowning, scowling, rolling eyes, huddling or slouching, for instance.
Draw attention to symptom-linked idioms, such as ‘having butterflies’, ‘knocking knees’ or ‘a chill down your spine’. What sayings can they add? Who can make one up?
Act out
Include some role-play, bringing concepts alive and sustaining an element of fun. Invite pairs of pupils to ad lib emotionally charged scenarios – embarrassing, funny or worrying, perhaps, and invite feedback from the rest.
Invite imagery
Emotions lend themselves to imagery, so bring similes and metaphors to the fore through everyday examples, such as ‘a face like thunder’, ‘walking on air’ and ‘fired up’.
Discuss traditional links between moods and colours, such as jealousy with green and red with anger, and now invite other possibilities. This will unlock an infinite spectrum of imagery possibilities, especially with the help of a simple format. This could be: ‘If.., then…’, with an example like: ‘If joy were a flavour (or noise, smell, texture…), what kind would it be?’ or ‘If grumpiness were a vehicle (or animal, weather, landscape…), what type would it be?’ This entertaining game will empower your pupils’ poetry-writing.
Ease into writing stage
Putting pen to paper can be nerve-racking, sometimes stunting the flow of ideas, so provide an opportunity for students to scribble down some phrases on scrap paper before starting on their poems.
Set a simple exercise for this, perhaps using your practised ‘If…’ format, though maybe calling for extended metaphors this time, as in: ‘If excitement were a substance, it would be fizzing, bubbling pop, exploding out of the bottle’.
After sharing a few jottings, invite a first-person approach: ‘When I’m excited, I’m like a bottle of fizzed-up pop…’. This way, they can accommodate body language, as in: ‘When you shout, I turn into a wobbly jelly’.
Remind pupils how a simile can be turned into a metaphor by removing like – ‘Sometimes I’m [like] a bottle of pop’ – and point out the power of this tiny step.
Let poetry-writing take off
By this point, everyone will be fired and equipped for freestyle poetry crafting. They may wish to return to their desks for this, but reassure them that you only expect drafts for now. Elicit suggestions for potential opening lines and write them up, together with your ‘If…’ one. Then stand back a while to let them think and craft.
Prompt for refinements
As poems develop, offer light, individual support, while simultaneously encouraging experimentation. You might prompt for clarity, enrichments or distillations, or nudge for alliteration, rhythm, questions or twists. Where poems are spreading into rambles, question line length and focus.
Return to the poems later for editing – and for the fun of illustrating or decorating. Invite volunteers to read out their completed poems, respecting those preferring to keep theirs private, and sustain the literary zest you have inspired with congratulations all round.
Develop through drama
Stretch your pupils’ expressive skills further through a performance. Help them weave selected lines from their poems into a script, comprising a story, sequence or conceptual journey, to be presented through drama, dance, physical movement, percussion – whatever they deem best.
They could even incorporate emotion-words from their study language or history era. When they present their show in assembly, every audience member will surely find something in it that speaks to them.
And now, how about a hilarious class rap, depicting the hiccups and hurdles of putting on that show?
A handful of pictures, a kaleidoscope of moods, a cosy chat, a flash of drama and a game – that’s almost all you need to unlock your pupils’ literary talents. The other ingredient, of course, is your talent, as teacher.
TEASING POETRY FROM EMOTIONS: 10 KEY ELEMENTS
1 A meaningful theme 2 A relaxed atmosphere 3 A balance between light and profound 4 Physical enactment 5 Personal + impersonal approaches 6 Unobtrusive building of language and techniques 7 Space for personal expression and experimentation 8 Light guidance 9 Development through a different approach 10 Praise
Kate Williams is a published children’s poet and experienced poetry workshop leader for primary and secondary schools. She has also written many inspiration-focused articles for teachers. Further information is available on her website: poemsforfun.wordpress.com
