“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words”
-Robert Frost
Hi everyone and welcome back to my 4th, and final, blog. When I started this unit, almost a semester ago, and learned everything we would undertake in these last few months, I honestly thought it was impossible. Yet here I am, a week away from presently a 10 minute (ish) long performance on poetry, and while yes, it has certainly been difficult, and has its ups and downs, we’ve all proved to ourselves, that it is in fact possible.
Since my last blog, we’ve all been writing, deleting, rewriting, and editing poetry, as well as writing a speech to go along with all these very thoroughly written poems. It doesn’t seem that long ago that we had months before we had to have this performance-ready, but time really does fly and looking back, we’ve achieved a lot in these last few weeks, not only finishing the task, and overcoming any barriers along the way, but also writing a speech, making a performance, and adding movement to all our poems.
Our topic, women’s equality, has been a really big topic to undertake, and it’s been really interesting, and a little bit shocking, to put myself in the shoes of many different women, from all times and places, and find out what life was really like for them. It’s also been really inspiring to see how far we’ve come as a society, and how hard the women before us had to fight for what we expect.
Over this entire unit, I feel as though my poetry writing, and performing skills have improved a lot. Of course, Angela Pieta is partially to thank for this when she came in again, and helped us gain confidence in performing our poetry, and showed us some ways to plan how we say certain things in our performance, and movement within the performance. She helped us to notice little things about a person while they are talking, and showed us what worked, and what didn’t. We also got a chance to perform in front of the rest of the class. Since the last time we performed poetry in front of each other, we’ve all developed our own style, so it was nice to see what everyone else’s poetry and performance styles were.
Overall, this unit has been full of ups and downs, but I really think it will all be worth it when we perform next week, proud of what we have achieved as individuals and a group. But there’s one question that still remains unanswered, after everything that’s happened. Why do we turn to poetry in key moments of our lives? We know that humans have been writing poetry since practically the beginning of time, but nobody really knows why. So many things have been phased out of society, and a lot of them are probably for the best, but why has poetry stayed? For me, in this performance, poetry has allowed me to tell the stories of women who can’t tell their own. It has let me make sure they are not forgotten or left behind and their contributions to the world, however small they might be, are recognised. I think people may turn to poetry because it’s there. It consistent, but it can also change to be whatever you need it to be at the time, and whether the poetry is kept private, or shared, it will always be there. I think everyone may have a different idea as to why people turn to poetry, and I think they are all correct.
So as this unit and this year come to an end, I think it’s safe to say that everyone in the year 9 Aspire English class has come a long way since we started this unit and that there is going to be some very different, but very good performances to look forward to next week.
Dakota's Blog 