Welcome to what I hope will be a regular feature and will help connect the dots between the poetry community and the people who listen to and read their stuff. The poem of the week will invariably be something I’ve stumbled across that I’ve found inspiring or have seen working well in classes on my travels to schools across the UK. Our starting point...drumroll....will be the brilliant Joshua Seigal’s poem - “I don’t like poetry” from his collection of the same name. When I was working with the ‘Picture the Poet’ alongside the National Literacy Trust, this was the first piece I was brought into contact with by a school group in Preston who had used it to introduce some Year 5 pupils to all the different vocabulary we use to deconstruct poems. It’s a fantastically lighthearted way to get across some really great learning points and it always makes me smile when I read it. You can find out more about Joshua’s work on his website over at https://www.joshuaseigal.co.uk/
I Don't Like Poetry
I don’t like similes.
Every time I try to think of one
my brain feels like a vast, empty desert;
my eyes feel like raisins floating in an ocean;
my fingers feel like sweaty sausages.
I don’t like metaphors.
Whenever I attempt them
a hammer starts beating in my chest;
lava starts bubbling in my veins;
zombies have a fight in my stomach.
I don’t like alliteration.
We learnt about it in school
but it’s seriously, stupendously silly;
definitely drastically difficult;
terribly, troublingly tricky.
I don’t like onomatopoeia.
I wish I could blow it upwith a ZAP! and a BANG! and a CRASH!;
a BOOM! and a CLANG! and a POW!;
a CLASH! and a BAM! and a THUD!
And I don’t like repetition
I don’t like repetition
I don’t like repetition...
