Comments on: Poetry Friday: Poetry Comics

By: Sally

Sally — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:27:35 +0000

Hi Michael, I take your point! But it’s not all modern poetry here that Morice tackles, but early modern stuff (17th century) and later — he does 19th century Dickinson and Whitman, for example. I think the older poems are, the more opaque they are to students. I’ve taught poetry as an English teacher and a creative writing teacher and I often find with students that there are two ways to derive pleasure from poetry — some get it from critical reading (finding out what the poem means through its language and the cultural context it was written in) and others through creative engagement of some sort. I think Morice has taken the creative approach; it’s not always successful, admittedly, but as I said in my post, I applaud this effort for what it can do to make poetry come alive in the classroom.

By: laurasalas

laurasalas — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:28:16 +0000

I’m interested to see this. In a way, I want the words to provide the images. But I love poems written in response to images, so why not the reverse? I’ve just put it on interlibrary loan–thanks.

By: MichaelB

MichaelB — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:22:10 +0000

I really am not too sure that I like this idea. I accept that much modern poetry often doesn’t strke a chord with modern children, but to replace language with images surely means you that you have given up in trying to awaken an interest in learning about how rich and expressive language can be.
Encouraging kids toillustrate poems seems like an excellent idea, but giving them comic interpretations of a poem seems, well, comical.

By: Aline

Aline — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:48:47 +0000

This one sounds fantastic. I like the idea of mixing up genres… I’ll try to get hold of a copy soon.

By: Tabatha

Tabatha — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:28:23 +0000

Wow, interesting! Thanks for letting us know about this.