Hi-ho! Hi-ho! It’s a long-weekend you know!
With work to plan and poems to scan…
Hi-ho! Hi-ho! Hi-ho!
Today was the last day our visiting colleagues from CPUT were with us. It was very interesting to get to know them – and to see how they approach their work! I can honestly say that I’ve learned something from every other teaching student I’ve met so far. Our lecturers at Stellenbosch were correct when they told us that the practicum will be an invaluable learning experience.
On to academics: the thing that struck me the most today, was how differently we can and should be teaching poetry. Yes, poetry as literature does have quite a bit of technical aspects to it – but it is also much more than a sum of parts. Poetry should be taught as a form of expression, communication and observing. This is how we make sense of the world. This is how we sing. This is the art of sentience.
In the classroom, it is important to reveal the pleasure of poetry. The enjoyment thereof. The power poetry possesses should be plastered on every ponderable plane! (I digress…) Poetry should be loved first – for it is only when we love poetry, that we can risk analyzing it without killing it off entirely.
Poems are impressions of interpretations.
They are left open to interpretation on purpose.
Many truths can come from one verse – but don’t be fooled: Not all answers are equal and yes, there are such things as wrong answers to questions on poetry. My opening verse is not a navel-gazing enquiry into the metacognitive processes surrounding observations of religious vacillation.
(Yes, I went there.)