Y6Blog#3

A while ago we asked for Y6 to write a poem.

Although it’s controversial, I must admit to not being a fan of poetry in general.  Some half remembered lines flit into my mind from time to time but I could never really emulate my Nan who could recite entire verses from memory well into her 70s.

However, as anyone who has worked with me will know, I do love music… In particular I love singing along to music in a voice that makes dogs howl and young children want to go to bed early.  And here’s the thing-one day a friend of mine gave me a book of poems which were written by a singer called David Berman.

A singer he said, not a poet.

Now I already knew I loved Berman’s music, but the poems were a revelation.  It felt like, finally, a voice that I could understand and identify with. In short bursts of amazing description, he made me feel like I was inside his head, looking at life through his eyes-the feeling I get all the time when reading fiction or listening to amazing songwriters like Bob, but elusive up till now in poetry.

Much of his work concerns the indoors, the everyday and the humdrum and I think it’s this that amazes me the most; the ability to be creative with a deliberately limited set of resources.  I am not going to give examples out of context here but you can look up the book “Actual Air” online.

So, last week I was riding my bike (always good for thinking) down to the chain ferry on a beautiful sun drenched October afternoon.  Many others had the same idea and so the car park was packed with people watching the sunset and letting the work day go…

I was thinking about the poetry homework, Bob Dylan and how seeing the world in a different but still recognisable way might be the key to success for art.  With this in mind, I decided not to write a poem but simply to collect and remember the scenes that struck me the most.

Here they are:

+ An ice white Porsche dripping soapy water on jet black driveway.

+ Two people asleep in the tipped back seats of their car, each turned towards the other.

+ A seagull pecking a packet of sandwich crumbs, stopping and tilting its head to read the        label.

+ A empty play park with no children left but one of the swings still swaying.

This week, why not have a go at making a list like the one above?  Quality is much more important than quantity-keep only the very strongest ideas.  Write them in the comments section below and I will make a compilation of all of our ideas ready for the next blog.

It will be like a poem, but not quite.

And I think that might be just what we need.

R Howard,

KS2 Leader, SMCPS.