Seminar 4 (University of Leicester, 21st January 2012) Poetry pedagogy 4: creative approaches and future developments in Poetry pedagogy.

Venue: The seminar is being held in rooms F015, F112, F211, F213 in The Fraser Noble building in the School of Education, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RF. (This building is just off London Road and 7 minutes walk from the train station.) A map of the campus is at the bottom of this page. Those attending the seminar will be sent door codes. On arrival please make your way to F015 on the ground floor for registration. 

This will address aim d) ‘To consider the transformative and creative potential of poetry teaching to support the intellectual and aesthetic development of all learners across the 5 -19 age range in a period when debates about standards in reading and writing dominate educational agendas’. It will focus on research on creative approaches (especially using e-learning), aim to synthesise key debates about poetry pedagogy from the previous seminars and open the debate to a wider audience to consider directions for future research and practice in poetry pedagogy. This will be a larger conference event on a Saturday to enable greater teacher participation. Will include a keynote and paper presentations, review by previous discussants, a choice of two workshops per person on writing, use of online poetry and slam performance, performances and poster presentations by teachers and students, The conference will end with a poetry reading and book signing. The speakers at this fourth seminar include:

Professor Teresa Cremin, The Open University: ‘Positioning onself as a poetry reader in the classroom'.  (Keynote speaker).

• Abstract: In the context of increased interest in teachers’ literate identities, this paper examines the new connections, stances and possibilities which opened up when teachers re-positioned themselves as readers of poetry in the classroom. Drawing upon the UKLA research Teachers as Readers: Building Communities of Readers, it focuses on a case study of a KS1 ‘Poetry Teacher, who, in tune with Commeyras et al. (2004), explored the interplay between her own poetry practices and her practice as a teacher of poetry. Evidence from questionnaires, interviews, reading histories, journals, children’s discussion groups and classroom observations is utilised. The paper reveals that through documenting her own reading habits and considering her reading history, this teacher was prompted to re-view her understanding about teaching poetry, re-shape her pedagogy and re-position herself in the classroom. It considers how she constructed, represented and performed her identity as a poetry reader, and the pedagogic consequences and dilemmas encountered, as well as the influence upon disaffected readers in her class.

• Teresa Cremin is a Professor of Education (Literacy) at the Open University, a Trustee and Past President of UKLA and Board Member of Booktrust and the Poetry Archive. She is also joint coordinator of the BERA Special Interest Group on Creativity, a member of the ESRC Peer Review College and chair of the IRA’s Outstanding Dissertation Award committee. Teresa has written and edited over 25 books and numerous papers and professional texts. Her research, teaching and consultancy focuses on creative teaching and learning, teachers’ literate identities and practices, and building communities of readers and writers within and beyond school.

Dr Janette Hughes, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada: ‘Digital Poetry: A Multimodal Literacy Experience’.

 

• Abstract: Working with expanding notions of “remixing practices,” I explore the shifts (i.e. from print text to multimodal forms of expression) that students experience as they compose digital poetry in a creative writing class.  Through my work with approximately 75 adolescents aged 13-17 over a four year period, I examine the affordances offered by shifting modes of expression (which include the use of image, sound, gesture, colour, special effects) through the sharing of student-generated multimodal digital poetry.  In particular, I explore digital poetry as a new literacy practice and examine how the creation of digital poetry has the potential to encourage student engagement, attention to the performative characteristics of poetry, including an increasing sense of audience, and to promote transformation as student writers position themselves as agents of change in poems based on social justice issues that concern them. 

• Dr. Janette Hughes is an Associate Professor in Language and Literacy Education at The University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada.  Her research interests include New Literacies Studies, Multimodal Literacies and Digital Literacies.  She has been exploring the multimodal affordances of digital poetry since 2006 when she completed her doctoral dissertation on Poets, Poetry and New Media.  Dr. Hughes is the recent recipient of the Early Researcher’s Award, sponsored by the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, the first educational researcher to receive this honour.  

 

Professor Morag Styles, Professor of Poetry, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge 

Workshops (choice of two) given by:

Julie Blake: Education Manager, The Poetry Archive: In Poetry Matters so far, we have explored poetry teaching and learning, and exchanged poems we enjoy sharing with young people.  Many of us have compared scars from working within the examined school English curriculum.  But what exactly is this? As part of her work as the Education Manager of the Poetry Archive, Julie Blake maintains a database of every poem currently specified in the English GCSE and A Level curriculum.  In this workshop, we will explore what the database has to tell us about the nature of the poetry on offer to young people  within this curriculum framing.

Andy Craven-Griffiths: Poet, rapper, singer and workshop facilitator who has performed on national television and radio, at venues and festivals across the country, and has had work commissioned by the likes of the British Arts Council and Rethink mental health charity. With his band, Middleman, he has toured England, Holland and Germany and so far had music synced to Channel 5, E4, Channel 4, and the NBA2K11 computer game. The workshop will begin with an introduction to what slam poetry is, including a couple of examples, followed by some short rhyming games and leading into writing a collaborative, team piece, to be performed at the end of the session in an X-factor style showcase.

Joelle Taylor: Professional spoken word artist, published poet and playwright, as well as the founder and Artistic Director of SLAMbassadors UK, the national youth slam championships administered by the Poetry Society. Joelle will be leading a master class in performance poetry, using the techniques developed over the last decade for the Poetry Society’s SLAMbassadors UK project – the national youth slam championships. During the workshop participants will look at stimulus for writing original pieces, explore the history of UK spoken word and the power of SLAM poetry, learn how to beatbox and how to create a polyvocal poem. Each of the completed pieces will also be filmed and can be emailed to those who take part.

David Whitely and Professor Morag Styles, University of Cambridge. Caribbean Poetry workshop: Drawing on materials developed for working with teachers in both the Caribbean and England, this workshop will provide a stimulating forum for considering the distinctive challenges and pleasures that Caribbean poetry offers young readers. The workshop will have two parts. In the first of these – ‘Place and Vision’ – we will consider how the physical characteristics of the Caribbean region are instilled with particular potency in the imaginative vision of the poetry. We will explore this with examples from the work of Eric Roach and Derek Walcott. The second half of the session will explore ‘Music and Voice’. Here we look at the way local oral and musical traditions have imparted a unique vitality to Caribbean poetry, a vitality that is founded – perhaps paradoxically – on the energy of resistance to the region’s brutal histories.

Ally Davies: Education Officer, The Poetry Society

The whole seminar series will conclude with a Poetry Reading given by Jackie Kay, prize-winning poet, dramatist and prose writer  

 

Timings

9.30 – 10.00: Coffee, browsing Roving Books bookshop and registration

10 - 10.30: Discussants Drs Sue Dymoke, Andrew Lambirth and Anthony Wilson summarise discussions from seminars 1, 2 & 3.

10.30 - 11.15: Paper 1 (Professor Teresa Cremin) plus discussion

11. 15 - 11.30 : Coffee

11.30 - 1.00: Workshops (each participant can choose 2 workshops of 45 mins each - workshops repeated)

1.00 - 1.45: Lunch with bookshop and poster displays of school students’ work

1.45 - 2.30: Paper 2 (Dr Janette Hughes) plus discussion

2.30 - 2.45: Final thoughts on the series (Professor Morag Styles)

2.45 - 3.30: Poetry reading and book signing (Jackie Kay)

Accommodation information (in case you want to stay on Friday night before the seminar.)

The Belmont is the nearest hotel to the School of Education. Please be aware that several colleagues have found the Ramada Jarvis has not offered the discounts stated below.

The Ibis hotel is near the station and approximately 10 minutes walk from the venue.