The word, ‘poetry’ may give students a ‘brain freeze’ and the thought of analysing poetry may incite a groan! If you are an English or a Literature teacher, you would understand what this means!

Here is a workshop which will help you teach poetry-analysis to young students. This workshop is also for you if you are a Humanities student or a poetry-enthusiast and would like to get a better grip on contemporary poetry.

COURSE OUTLINE

Put together with the intent of ‘unscrambling’ contemporary poetry, the workshop will

• help participants focus on the poets’ word choice, sentence structure, figurative language, and sentence arrangement which work together to establish mood and meaning in the text.
• introduce some of the poetry stalwarts of the time including older, canonical Western poets and contemporary Asian voices (the list is long from Shakespeare to Seamus Heaney and includes Yeats, Siegfried Sassoon, Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, Sylvia Plath, Edwin Thumboo, Arthur Yap, Pooja Nansi…) – their art will be critically interpreted with an aim to understand their literary styles as well as themes of love, war, loss and multiple identities which populate modern poetry.
• allow participants to acquire tools and techniques for effectively communicating critical responses to literary texts.
• through a number of hands-on exercises and an actual session of writing, allow participants  to familiarise themselves with a range of writing styles and techniques, including the poets’ choice of imagery, development of plot, use of poetic diction and stanzaic form which lend structure to the piece.