I’m doing an Australian Poetry unit with Year 11s this term. Even I shirk a little at the thought of it, conjuring up stale images of bush ballads and Banjo Patterson. No. I really want to get into Dorothy Porter without having to scream, “I AM A LESBIAN” at the little darlings. Reading ‘The Monkey’s Mask’ will be too time intensive so I might just give them a little taste to wet their poetry-is-not-necessarily-lame whistle. Anyway, I have no idea how to teach poetry, really.
Poetry For Dummies
How can I teach them
Dorothy Porter?
How can I say,
‘This is how you mix art and spunk’?
But I could never use the word spunk.I don’t have the smarts for poetry
I have to use a manual.
I can barely sound out scale;
I can barely spell assonance
And the manual usually ends up in the trees.Like Porter said,
‘I get magic
but I don’t get numbers’.
All they need to do is
Learn how tospellsmell, right?
