Poetry is a beautiful language art that we should learn, appreciate and write. However, it isn’t popular among us Hong Kong students.
There’re a few reasons, namely 3, why we don’t like to learn poetry.
First of all, it requires a wide range of vocabulary for us to write a good poem or song. For example, in acrostics, the first letter of each line can join together and form a meaningful word. If we don’t have enough words in our mind, how can we choose a good word that can express the meaning as well as fit the requirement for acrostics? Not to mention these poetic devices like consonance (repetition of consonants in a line), assonance (repetition of vowels in a line) or even double acrostics (both the first letters and ending letters in each line form a word). With a limited word bank, we surely cannot write a good poem, which drives us away from poetry.
Also, poetry requires proficient oral skills. A limerick, in which accents are distributed as ‘33223’ in the five lines, and a ballad, in which iambic alternating tetrameter and trimeter are employed, require excellent oral techniques in order to stress the restricted syllables correctly in such a way that the beauty of poetry can be demonstrated through reading or singing. Without splendid oral skills, we may not be able to appreciate some of the poetry, not to mention composing them.
Undoubtedly, writing a poem consumes much time. As different types of poems and songs get their respective form and structure, complying with the requirements as well as drafting a good one needs a lot of time and effort. With heavy workloads from other subjects every day, we don’t have that much time to probe into poetry and write good pieces.
I think that schools can do a number of things to promote poetry, the most beautiful language art, among students.
First and foremost, they can adopt Poems and Songs as one of the electives in the English curriculum in NSS. By taking this step, teachers and students can have sufficient time to teach and learn poetry thoroughly, so that students can be attracted by the well-structured poems and thus get interested in them.
Schools can also hold some sort of poetry competition or so on to encourage students to read and write more poems and songs. By prize incentive, students can go and search for the information of poems and songs so that they can have more exposure to them.
Last but not least, schools can also allocate time for a poem-reading or song-singing session every morning. Having teachers and students reading aloud poems and songs in a pleasant way always appeals to students and they will find out more about poems and songs.
Remember, don’t think that a poem and song is merely one piece of writing. In fact, it can help us express our feelings and thoughts.
There’s a kind of poem called ‘shape poem’ in which the words themselves form an image which is in line with the topic. Therefore, you could write about being heart-broken using the shape of a broken heart. If you aren’t confident enough, you could draw the picture first and then fill the words in, and it becomes a concrete poem.
There’s also a kind of poem called ‘haiku’, a Japanese poetic form in which a cutting word and two scenes should be displayed in not more than 17 syllables. By using imagery describing an eagle flying up to cloud nine, you can express your happiness vividly.
Of course, using personification in a descriptive poem and identifying yourself as one of the characters can also help express thoughts in an implicit way.
See? Poems and songs are different from others as they can help us express our feelings and thoughts.
By writing the blog entry, I hope all of you can have a peek into the problem of the unpopularity of poetry among students and appreciate the beauty of the cultural heritage passed to us by our ancestors.