Feeling Poetry: the Power of Praise

Jane Spiro, UK

Jane Spiro is Head of Applied Linguistics at Oxford Brookes University. She runs programmes for teachers of English and for students of English as a first and a second language. She has written Creative Poetry Writing and Storybuilding (Oxford), is interested in the role of creative writing in language learning, and is herself a creative writer. E-mail: jspiro@brookes.ac.uk

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Introduction
Background
Examples
Conclusions
References

Introduction

We know how hard it can sometimes be, to 'think positive thoughts' in the course of a typically overstretched and multi-tasking day. If told to stop for a moment and remember what has been good about the day, we may well protest there is no time for this, nothing has been good at all, and thinking is unlikely to make it better. We have all been there! And because we have all been there, we can share with our learners the experience of the activity I will describe below.

Background

The activity is one I have evolved over a number of years, and in a number of guises, with groups of all shapes, sizes and demographies. It works to calm down a stormy Friday-afternoon class, to give homesick and distracted classes respite from their sense of separation, to cohere a group that don't trust one another, to relax a group that is stressed. Fundamentally, it draws on two powerful strategies to make this work: the first is the power of praise - the almost chemical change in us when we consider those things we value and admire; the second is the power of metaphor to make our thoughts capture the quintessential and the symbolic.

As a starting point is the notion of praise song. Whether or not learners have met this as a term, much can be unpacked from the two words: praise - something we love, value, admire, describe in words, an admiration made known, 'flung to the heavens': song - something chanted out loud, perhaps with musical instruments such as drums, perhaps accompanied by dance and movement. All of these are the case with traditional praise song from black Africa. Just a few lines capture their quality and impact:

You lime of the forest, honey among rocks,
Lemon of the cloister, grape in the savannah.
(from an Amharic love song, highlands of Ethiopia)

My bull is white like the silver fish in the river,
White like the shimmering crane bird on the river bank
White like fresh milk! (from a Dinka praise song, south of Sudan)

Having introduced the topic of praise song, shared interpretations of what it might mean, and offered examples, the stages of the activity involve moving ever nearer to the learners generating songs of their own. The first example above is praising a lover; the second is praising a bull. But praise songs could be about anything we admire: Pablo Neruda, for example, writes in praise of ironing:

It wrinkles, and it piles up,
The skin of the planet must be stretched,
The sea of its whiteness must be ironed. (Neruda in Plenos poderes 1962)

A moment of visualisation gives time for you/the group to conjure up something loved and admired, object, activity, human being, animal. In my own experience of this activity, I conjured up my violin, to which I have been monogamously attached since the age of 14. Other participants have chosen to praise: the hairdresser, the washing machine, new shoes, although more frequently, praise is for best friends and family members. Especially is this the case when the learners are distant from home, and my examples in this article will be from such a group - a multilingual teachers' group on a short course in the UK.

Our next stage is to form a collective list of the objects of praise. Having done so, and allowed this to illustrate the shared values in the group, I offer to the class a second list of words describing the natural world, side by side with the first. The task is simply to choose the word from the 'natural' list that most exactly describes/compares with, the praise object; or to add a new one that suits better.

With this choice, a simple first sentence is formulated. There are two choices here:

Simile: My _____________ is like a ________
eg. my mother is like a lake, my father is like a rock

Metaphor: My ____________ is a ______________
eg. my friend is a shell, my wife is a rose

We have, in one move, leapt into the realm of linguistic adventure. However new the process of writing creatively in English, however great the blocks, there is no participant who has not been able to respond to this process. From this point, the writers are asked to 'grow' their metaphor (or simile) by explaining in two or three short lines, why mother and lake (or father and rock, or wife and rose) are similar. Below are examples from the teachers' class, most first time creative writers in English.

Examples

My husband is a lake
He has clear and blue feelings
He is deep in his thoughts
But shows peace through his eyes
        Emma (Spain)

My father is the sea,
rough as he is,
quiet as he is.

My mother is the tree,
shelter she is,
shade she is.

My husband is the water,
pure as he is
important as he is
        Rose (China)

My son is the air to me,
He is always around me in ways of a variety,
The gentle breeze, conforming as it is, is his being obedient;
There could be strong wind in his being rebellious.
Whatever the air is
        It is important to me
I live on the air by breathing in it
What will happen without it?
An idiot can imagine
        Xiang Zhang (China)

My grandmother is now an orange
Her skin is no longer smooth

She's seen - not only - sun in her days
At 90 she's still full of juice.

My brother is a tree.
While his roots burrow deep,
He grows up into a new world.

My husband is a river
He flows quietly along
My daughters are flowers
Even their skin blooms
My son is a mystery-man
Who sings his secret song
        June (Switzerland)

My son is a river.
He freshens me up.
He murmurs things to me.
He splashes me with love
        Fabiola (Spain)

My sister is a tree
She is tall and I look up at her
She is freshly green and she gives me oxygen.

When the wind blows at me, she sings for me through the leaves.
When the cloud comes, she cries for me through the rain.

She keeps growing and offers me bigger shelter,
Oh, how I love my sister!
And I hug her round with both my arms!
        Alice (China)

Conclusions

In some ways, the poems are their own testimony. They reveal both the universal story -the common experience of life and loves, and the specificity of these stories; the lively 90-year-old grandmother, the brother just leaving home who 'grows up into a new world', the blooming skin of young daughters: 'even their skin blooms'. The poems also illustrate the balance between revealing self - 'Oh how I love my sister!' - and establishing a safe distance through metaphor - 'she is a tree'. Most of all, the poems also make clear that capturing feelings creatively and memorably is within the capacity of every language user and learner.

To be fully congruent with the process, I am concluding with the poem I wrote alongside my students, in response to this task. I began with the violin as my love object. The violin then became a metaphor for marriage: my violin is my husband/my husband is a violin. As the one became the other, the following poem evolved, and I add this to the mix, by way of illustration that praise and metaphor is an invitation to us all, and worth a moment of thought in the middle of a busy day.

I knew from the first moment
we would find a voice, a way to sing,
you just wood and string
without me, and I a reaching
in space, a breath between notes
without you.

        I knew how the singing
would be, like a kite on air,
a running like a wild child
into sea.

        I wonder now about the mystery
in your wood, if you mourn the forest
where you were, if the wine-brown memory
in your grain holds all the singing
we have done, all the ways we have
reached for new notes,
all the ways we have found our place.

References

Praise poems are from the following collection of world poetry: Heath, R.B. ed. (1993 3^rd impression) Tradewinds Longman pp. 102, 104

Neruda, P. 'La poesia e blanca' in Walsh, D.D. trans. (1973) Residence on Earth New Directions

With thanks to the Creative Writing workshop participants, Oxford International Summer School, Summer 2006

Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.