Poetry for Performance

[Susan Stephenson, the Book Chook]

Poetry originally was meant to be performed. I have a special place in my heart for all the poetry I've performed in my life. It's helped me internalise wonderful language, great rhythm and rhyme and important themes, as well as given me so much delight and comfort over the years. I very much believe in learning poetry by heart, and repeated practices for performance is one way to do this. At the very least, it helps kids develop reading fluency, but the benefits to a child's heart and mind are incalculable. 

If you're introducing your kids to poetry performance, one way to get them to think about what's important for a successful performance is to model a disaster. I like to find a great rhythmic, fun poem and declaim it in a monotonous voice, head down, body slumped, ridiculous breaks and pauses, no movement. Aside from my personal enjoyment of the children's horrified silence moving into nervous giggles and culminating in relieved guffaws, I love the way this gets kids to think about features of a good performance. They've mostly noticed, if not articulated, them already. 

Next we develop some ideas that will help me improve my performance, and end up with a list involving actions and movement, expression, sound effects, posture, eye contact, voice, (pitch, rate and volume) etc. We look at the poem again, and discuss its meaning, and aspects of it that will need to be interpreted eg the mood, the way a character might feel, look or move, words that might need emphasis. I ask the kids to form groups and work out a way to perform my poem (or a section of it) creatively, incorporating as many of the criteria as they can. They then perform in groups for the rest of us, and we evaluate performances, looking for what worked well, and offering suggestions for alternatives.*

In subsequent lessons/workshops, I explore other poems and other ideas to enhance performance (add music, props, costumes, lighting, backdrops, improvised scenes), have kids choose poems they would like to perform, have large groups choose a favourite piece to perform and polish it to a high standard.

 

{This is a slightly shorter version than my original post at The Book Chook}