Some clichty folks
don’t know the facts,
posin’ and preenin’
and puttin’ on acts,
stretchin’ their backs.– from Weekend Glory by Maya Angelou
We’ve started poem presentations in the mornings. They are supposed to be a part of our daily community meeting, at the beginning as part of their sharing, but the meeting is such an established ritual that we frequently forget the poems until the end. What’s been nice is that the students have been reminding me about it rather than the other way around. This seems to indicate some interest.
Despite my having presented a couple poems, their having seen a video of Anis Mojgani’s excellent poetry performance, and their having read how to read a poem out loud, I had to do a lot of coaching for the first couple students; slow it down (it’s something I always have to work on myself); put some emotion into the performance; match the tone and expression to the meaning of the words.
I’m not the most experienced drama coach. Fortunately I did pick up one or two things from the excellent director we found for our play last winter (the importance of projection for example). It also helped that one of the first students to present has had quite a bit of experience in the theater, so, once I conveyed the idea that it was a performance, she knew what to do. Finally, because I’d called for volunteers to be the first presenters, the first few students who presented were not types to be easily embarrassed at being coached and commented on by myself and the rest of the class.
So far it’s worked very well. We’re doing one poem, from memory, a day, with no real theme for the week, rotating through the class. I’ll poll my students to figure out how they want to continue after we get through most of the class. Specific poets, poems on specific subjects, specific types of poems, there are a number of themes I’d like to try/negotiate. If I can get this started as an ongoing tradition there’ll be time to try it all.