By attending The Poet’s Quest we have learnt so much about the power and beauty of poetry. As we journeyed alongside Blake and Virginia we travelled through time and met some insightful (and whacky!) poets of the past. We discovered new poems, learnt about poetic devices and structures, and, perhaps most importantly, we were shown that while any poem can sound nice, the most significant poems have a clear message or theme.
In The Poet’s Quest, the hilarious Jester teaches Blake about the poetic devices of rhyme and rhyme scheme. He suggests that to become a master of rhyme you need to “start small and build your way up”.
Blake travelled in time to meet Dorothea Mackellar and we learnt more about how she used rhyme and alliteration in her famous poem ‘My Country’. We were also introduced to W.T. Goodge and how the rhythm of his poem ‘How We Drove the Trotter’ is to the beat of a trotting horse.
Blake then went to London where he met TS Elliot. TS Elliot taught him how to use imagery in his poetry. Imagery uses the 5 senses to describe an object or person. It’s creating an image in one’s head using just words. The trick behind it is to imagine that you are explaining something to someone who has never seen it before. “The Shark” by E.J Pratt was used as an example. The poem goes like
He seemed to know the harbour,
So leisurely he swam;
His fin,
Like a piece of sheet-iron,
Three-cornered,
And with knife-edge,
Stirred not a bubble
As it moved
With its base-line on the water.
His body was tubular
And tapered
And smoke-blue,
And as he passed the wharf
He turned,
And snapped at a flat-fish
That was dead and floating.
And I saw the flash of a white throat,
And a double row of white teeth,
And eyes of metallic grey,
Hard and narrow and slit.
Then out of the harbour,
With that three-cornered fin
Shearing without a bubble the water
Lithely,
Leisurely,
He swam—
That strange fish,
Tubular, tapered, smoke-blue,
Part vulture, part wolf,
Part neither—for his blood was cold.
After he had learned the aspects of poetry, he prepared to go home and win back Virginia. However, the poetry that he had used to fuel his time machine was so powerful that it sent him to the future. He discovered that in the future poetry and writing of all kind was banned, meaning you could get arrested by the word police. There he met a woman who was the guardian of poetry. Her job was to keep the only remaining poetry in the world safe from the word police. She helped him go back in time by letting him read the poems that she was protecting. Once his machine was fuelled, he went to the present and expressed his feelings for Virginia through poetry. By doing so, he not only won her back, but also rescued poetry from being banned in the future.
This performance was an incredible learning experience that opened our eyes and minds towards poetry. It taught us about the power of words and how important poetry really is.
Angela Tamargo-Napolitano
Year 8 Student
