Your poetry project
No prizes for guessing how I know that you have a poetry project to complete if you are in Sec 1 Zhonghua Sec.
Some pointers I would like to share:
Best not to pick up the anthology your Mum may have bought one Christmas to retrieve a tongue-twister for your project. Tongue twisters are fun but they don't have the "density" you need to allow you to extend your analytical tentacles. They are funny and challenging verbal trajectories but that's where their value ends.
You can do one of the following:
a) find a theme like War and start scouring for poems by poets from different cultures and nationalities, even better still speaking from two sides of the same war.
b) find a class of people. It could be a race like the Jews and you locate a poem by a Jewish holocaust victim and you find another by a Palestinian refugee. Or pick a diaspora - such as the overseas Indians, the overseas Chinese, what does the the migrant far from home think about? How about comparing with a poem by a Chinese-American or Indian- Brit about their identity?
c) find an issue that is universal such as love and friendship, social injustice or even the inevitability of death. In every beleaguered society, poetry is the vehicle of choice for the troubled conscience. You will find no scarcity here.
So go forth and find some gems - just make sure the poems touch some chords other than the vocal!
Some pointers I would like to share:
Best not to pick up the anthology your Mum may have bought one Christmas to retrieve a tongue-twister for your project. Tongue twisters are fun but they don't have the "density" you need to allow you to extend your analytical tentacles. They are funny and challenging verbal trajectories but that's where their value ends.
You can do one of the following:
a) find a theme like War and start scouring for poems by poets from different cultures and nationalities, even better still speaking from two sides of the same war.
b) find a class of people. It could be a race like the Jews and you locate a poem by a Jewish holocaust victim and you find another by a Palestinian refugee. Or pick a diaspora - such as the overseas Indians, the overseas Chinese, what does the the migrant far from home think about? How about comparing with a poem by a Chinese-American or Indian- Brit about their identity?
c) find an issue that is universal such as love and friendship, social injustice or even the inevitability of death. In every beleaguered society, poetry is the vehicle of choice for the troubled conscience. You will find no scarcity here.
So go forth and find some gems - just make sure the poems touch some chords other than the vocal!
Comments