What children are writing about

[william williams]

Well I agree Zondrae what are the rules of free verse
Why there are many here on the forum that would howl down the thought of free verse yet you all do it even David writes it.
What the hell!
Is it not the object of getting people to read and enjoy what is being written, or are we so narrow minded that we wish for readers to see it our way only and not the way that the masses can understand the story and enjoy it.
If we are not careful the future generations of readers will leave and go for something easier to understand and read instead.
I gather that my writings are often considered free verse so what if I am a square peg in a round hole
I know that many of you do not care my writings.
So please explane to my why do I keep getting return orders for my book and recordings. last tally 125 book and 180 cds STOP LOOK AND LISTEN otherwise we will become like the DODO Bird extinct.

Bill Williams

[Gary Harding]

You are absolutely correct on both scores Neville. Well done.

Free verse does appear to me to be rule-less random nice-sounding words and sentences. I have never made a secret of that fact. It confounds my small brain.

And yes, my poetic education is also very poor but at least I have never made a secret of that either... and as you say, that is sad for me...but life goes on...

However the topic is What Children Are Writing About with particular reference to Ipswich, rather than my self-confessed poor poetic education.... or the pros and cons of Free Verse as a stand alone topic.

David has covered it so incredibly well... I have read his comments several times.!!! Spot on. Getting children into proper poetry, the mentally challenging sort I mean, at an early age has always been a hobby-horse of mine. I care about kids a lot.

In a literary sense, if you want good trees, well you look after the seedlings..

[warooa]

https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct= ... 7474,d.dGY

I found this interesting. Like the poem by ee cummings.

Marty

[Neville Briggs]

I take your point Gary, we are getting off the track.... we always do !


Zondrae. I have a copy of the 5th edition of The Norton Anthology of Poetry. It contains 1,828 poems from 650 AD to 2002 AD. If I can get through all those several times, I might begin to understand how to answer your question.

The children at Ipswich figured it out.

[Neville Briggs]

It's an interesting blog Marty. More about grammar than form I think.

[warooa]

I know it's getting off the thread subject, but I do subscribe to the part about how you will be found out if you forgo the rules without knowledge of them - so yes, learn the rules and then break them.

[Neville Briggs]

I agree Marty. As Stephen Fry has said ( sorry Matt ) subverting the rules assumes that there are rules to subvert.
I just wish we had a better term than "rules"; sounds constricting and dampening rather than guiding and encouraging.

[David Campbell]

I’ll try to answer Zondrae’s question first. There are no “rules” to free verse, at least not in the way they’re understood for what we call bush poetry. There’s nothing which says: “You must do this or that.” Instead, there are a variety of techniques, particularly relating to layout, that you can use to try to communicate with the reader. Really, the only limit is your imagination, and if you look through the children’s poetry referred to above you’ll see a range of approaches.

A common criticism is that a lot of it just looks like “chopped up prose”, and yes, it can appear that way…the question is why was it done like that? If you look at my two poems in the Ipswich ‘other poetry’ section you could ask me why I broke a certain line in a particular place and my answer might be nothing more than “Gut feeling. It seemed right.” Or I could give a more definitive answer, as with these lines from “Still Life”:

teenagers, baseball caps disdainfully
cocked, as graceful as ballet dancers

pirouetting casually on skateboards;

I put a line-break (hence, a slight pause) between “disdainfully” and “cocked” to emphasise the physical movement, the almost contemptuous jerk of the head, which then contrasts with the flowing grace of their progress. And there’s a stanza-break between “dancers” and “pirouetting” again to emphasise changes in movement, the casual twists and turns that look so easy but are in fact very difficult. Maybe the impression I was trying to convey comes across, maybe not. Maybe it only works in a subconscious way. All I can do is write it and hope.

One of the joys of free verse is the flexibility to experiment with layout, to play around with form and structure in trying to get the message across. We had a discussion comparing free verse to bush poetry on this site a couple of years ago. You’ll find it at: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3903

And here’s another perspective on what children are writing about. Even if all of the children’s poems at Ipswich had used consistent metre and rhyme, hardly any of them would have satisfied the competition’s requirements for bush poetry. Why? Because there’s nothing particularly “Australian” about them. In the 11-13 age group, for example, “Stolen” has some rhyme and an Australian theme, but the two poems either side (“Home” and “My Grandmother Refuses to Die”) are not obviously related to Australia.

So if, as Stephen suggests, rhyme and metre are seen as difficult, is expecting young people to follow those rules AND write something identifiably “Australian” asking too much? The consensus seems to be that they’re producing some pretty amazing work as it is, and that needs to be applauded and supported.

The whole issue of what constitutes Australian content is fairly complicated anyway. How do we explain its intended flexibility to the younger generations? My “Wasteland” has been criticised from within the bush poetry community because it’s about dementia, and there’s nothing uniquely Australian about that. But nor is there about a haunting piece of writing like “Wholly in the Deep” (16-17 years), and I’d like to think that the author might be encouraged to have a go at more structured verse without being put off by the idea that there are too many restrictive rules and regulations.

Cheers
David

[Stephen Whiteside]

You've opened a can of worms now, David!

I worry that the ABPA is digging a big hole for itself with its insistence on "Australian" content (whatever that means). We have seen how the Miles Franklin award has been forced to widen its definition of "Australian", as it has come under increasing criticism in recent years.

If I want to write a poem for children about a hippopotamus, or Big Ben, or the American space programme, I will of course do so. Are these poems no longer bush verse? I am an Australian, living and writing in Australia, in rhyme and metre. Should this not be enough?

Perhaps there will come a time when there will be two categories - one "Australian" (in the strict sense of the word) and one more "open". Or perhaps the "rhymers" will eventually be forced to start their own organisation in parallel with (competition with?) the ABPA.

[Stephen Whiteside]

A couple of other thoughts.

C. J. Dennis did not always write about Australia or Australians. His obituary to G. K. Chesterton is a poem that springs to mind in this regard.

Also, we do not hesitate to accept poems about Australian soldiers fighting at Gallipoli as being bush verse. Would we feel the same way about poems about Australians soldiers today deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq?