Poetry by Heart

Let’s do it!  Let’s boldly copy the UK and Canada and Ireland before them, and have a Poetry by Heart event in our schools.  Admit it – most of our television is copied directly from BBC*.  So why shouldn’t we steal this really great idea and reintroduce our children to poetry?

When I was a minister student intern in Scotland, one of the things I remember fondly is Halloween.  The kids dress up as here, but the ‘trick or treat’ phase is a bit different: kids have to recite a poem or tell a joke or story to get their candy.  It was great fun to hear what they came up with (with a little help from mom and dad, of course).

I still remember (well at least part of) the poem I had to memorize in 6th grade, Joyce Kilmer’s Trees:  I think that I shall never see . . . a poem lovely as a tree . . . a tree whose hungry mouth is pressed . . . against the earth’s sweet-flowing breast . . . Poems are made by fools like me . . . but only God can make a tree.  I always like the last couplet best – maybe preacher-lady was my destiny all along.

But I digress: kids are already memorizing poetry (they call it music); so let’s give them some good stuff to latch onto.




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*Really, England, the best you could give us was Wife Swap?  Really?  And when you chose the reverse (to copy us instead), your first choice was The Apprentice?  Does your shame know no bounds?  Confused.com