To rhyme or not to rhyme?

 Teaching poetry is always challenging. Students have many misconceptions about what poetry is and many seem to have issues* with the idea that they are expected to read, write or in other way, consort with verse.

It is always disheartening to a poetry enthusiast to hear the collective groan rise up in a classroom when you announce that you are doing poetry. I have considered a stealth approach. Maybe hand out about a bit of Tennyson or Byron without telling them and treat it like prose. Or when setting a creative writing assignment tell them they are writing a special kind of short story with minor sentences, meter and rhythm.

“But isn’t this poetry, miss?”

“No, definitely not poetry. It’s rhyming prose.”

I guess I’m just not that devious.

The peculiar thing is that they seem fine with learning poetic terms and identifying them in isolation. They happily will do my simile/metaphor/personification quizzes and even my year 10's enjoy making up onomatopoeia or alliterations**.

My year 9's started their poetry portfolios today for the Tangata Whenua unit. The first poem they had to write was one about an attack on a Pa. I decided to let them do any form and make it fairly open structurally (which meant most chose Acrostic because they seem obsessed with Acrostic poems – easier I guess?) but they have to include at least one simile and one metaphor.

Most of them wrote pretty good poems – some of the boys did particularly gory ones (at least they were paying attention when I taught the traditional Maori weapons it seems).

However, it did start a bit of an argument when students started reading and critiquing each other’s poems. There was a disagreement between several students as to whether a poem was better (or as the students put it “more poetry”) if it rhymed or not.

“Real poems rhyme!”

“No, not rhyming is so more poetry!”

“Is not!”

I tried to reassure them that both rhyming and non-rhyming poems are valid and that they were allowed to do either. The objective was to create mood and atmosphere through effective imagery.

“Yeah, but rhyming is more poetry.”

I gave up.

* no doubt arising from some sinister event in their past I imagine. Although it is hard to imagine what the harrowing experience with poetry was exactly, possibly they were bullied by an ode or mugged by a sonnet when they were younger.

** Although yesterday the reason they enjoyed it so much was because they were trying to make offensive long alliterative sentences about their friends and classmates. Year 10s have extensive smutty vocab (particularly with the letters L and F) and know many synonyms for body parts. There was a bit of concern though when I threatened that they might have to hand their work in to be marked.