As I drive towards Bookworm this season beginning with the yellow blossoms in my car park to the ones along the Goa University road to the almost perennial Laburnum at the Taleigao park, I am reminded that summer is upon us and that I must help the team at Bookworm blooming.
My summer school is on ! I love the hours spent before I announce the theme and the daily rumination on what I have experienced and what the next day might bring. I love the teaching – sharing – listening – discovering moments and I am grateful to have this opportunity.
If one asked the Bookworm LiS team what aspect of their work they may feel could be strengthened, they are likely to say nothing. Relaxation perhaps – because they work hard and long hours even while the air gets humid and the trees stand still waiting for the breeze to come. I spring these summer school themes upon them and like the blooms on the yellow laburnums they open in full clusters and overwhelm me with their beauty.
I have chosen Poetry as a theme this year, returning to it after three years recognising that the LiS team is hardly the same and our LiS syllabus handles and holds poetry in limited ways. We also have recently been book shopping and have an exciting collection of Poetry picture books, anthologies and collections to take to classrooms. So arriving at the theme was simple.
Since then, I have been reading, refreshing my own approaches and thinking of the audience. This is critical to any teaching I plan. Who am I doing this for and why. What I want to leave the group with and how. So after thinking through and dismissing and thrashing my own ideas severely I settled on the light approach of how do we notice a poem. I used the internet to shower upon me a host of lesson plans and approaches to bring ‘noticing poetry’ to a group of learners and I am excited by how much I learnt in the process.
We began with our gentle Lalita sharing her Library task which was around Poetry. Lalita was not ashamed to declare that were it not for this task I have set every one at the start of the summer ( a range of small personal projects to strengthen their understanding around one aspect of literature), she would have never visited the Poetry shelf in the Library. It was good to hear this, a gentle reminder that facilitation even with adults is critical.
Lalita shared how hard it was for her to find a poem she could respond to, until some sky light opened. A collection edited by Naomi Shybe Nye drew her in so deeply she chose the text ‘ From the Diary of an Almost Four- Year Old to share with us all.
We discussed what we feel when we think of poetry and as Ciardi writes, how does a poem mean. It was not unusual to hear the usual struggle with poetry, the obscurity of trying to imagine what the poet is trying to say and the fact that poetry is often layered and so the meaning is dense , not getting it makes one feel obtuse.
I had just the right poem in my pocket to dispel some of the hang over that school poetry ( often our last brush with this form) has left with us. I whipped out Billy Collins ‘Introduction to Poetry‘ and we took a gentle walk with each of his lines in this beautiful text. Introduction To Poetry Poem by Billy Collins – Poem Hunter
There was immense relief in realising that our own understanding is central, that sometimes a poem may pass us because we are not ready for it or that we can wave to the author on the shore and not feel disgraced because we do not know what he means. I was delighted to stand behind Billy Collins slightly imperative words that begin with I ask.. I say.. I want.. because I was doing all of this in this introduction to Poetry Summer School.
Being a group that have accepted me as a leader/ guide/ helmswoman, the team come to the hour long sessions with grace, but the signs that something good is trickling can only be found in their responses. We have a Poem Pocket notice board ( honouring Poetry Month as well!) and I asked the group to put a poem in the pocket that they would like to share and every day there are treasures there. Hand written, illustrated and thoughtful.
The other sign was apparent to me today with Jewel. I gently suggested that I would call off today’s class as some team members were away at an outreach session and I would miss them and she said , ” Na Ma’am, you please do the session!” I loved that and if I needed any more urging, it was three minutes past the hour and Wanya came downstairs concerned saying , ” when is the class starting?”.
We are still gently noticing poetry for all its form, its ideas and its intent and in that space we are also noticing how delightfully good learning can be and how it all comes together when it is purposeful. We closed today’s session with reading Linda Paston’s I Married You and Let Evening Come by Jane Kenyon.
In teaching I feel I draw strength from texts, clinging on to the lines of both. “… and how happy we have been.” and ” Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid.”
I imagine us as a team in the library different from where we began at the start of summer, because as Dylan Thomas said, ‘The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. ‘
