“To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.”
― Gaston Bachelard

 A sudden sound, the friendly, warm lick from an expecting puppy, a cool, frech breeze on a simmering day, a quick conversation with an inspired pupil... the list can be very long.  But the concept stays the same: Poetry.

Words do not end with recalling the dictionary entry upon utterance or perception. It starts with where the reader finds him or herself, with the way we look at things. Perspective. Context.

The following categories share some of the poems we discussed in the Grade 9 and 10 classes, together with some special responses.

I marvel at the maturity with which these teenagers approach various complexities of life, and appreciate their honesty in sharing - whether fiction or truth...

Two tired, dark brown eyes staring at me in a familiar, yet strange way.  I criticize every inch of my body.

I see my hair curling up against my face as the sweat moistened it.

My fairly wide body covering the whole mirror.  My knees, legs and tummy aching, for it is not used to all the exercise it has just done.

The view from the window

Here I sit again, staring out the same old, worn-out window frame.  Nothing new, nothing unchanged, just like the past few years of my life.

I watch as the tiny droplets slowly drip down the window, in no rush, much like the cars passing by.  I wonder if, like me, they have nowhere to go, to belong.

The houses from across the road had lost their shine.  They had all lost their colour and had slowly started to fade into the dullness now before me.  Much like their owners, they have no personalities, no exciting identities.  Just a bunch of grrey, lifeless buildings.

Quoting Stephen L. Talbot ("The flood of careless, unconsidered, cheap words is the enemy of the profound word"), we sometimes take the time in class to practise condensing stories, descriptions and reflective moments to less than a 100 (or even 50!) words.  

Robert Southey said that words are like sunbeams, the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn, whereas Mark Twain contributed that the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. 

My Grade 10 English First Additional Language pupils regularly complete creative writing exercises.

With these we explored narrative, descriptive and reflective writing, and I am immensely proud of the results.  I gladly share some of their work with the world.

For obvious reasons their identities are witheld, but they know who they are.

Well done, Ladies.

#1

Unwanted, unloved and unvalued.  She is only still a minor, yet she is abandoned.  She wants to go play with the other girls in a kingdom, but her body remains on the chilly, damp sand.

She sits on the beach with her hands covered in sand, the ocean-water is washing over her feet.  Her body is shivering of the cold, her skin covered in goosebumps.