As I awake to our first Aspire English lesson for semester two, I am pleasantly welcomed with the focus literature, poetry, or more specifically “why we turn to poetry in key moments of our lives”. To my English teachers’ dismay, poetry was always seen to me as a pretentious arrangement of words to express feelings rhythmically, in other words, a written musical involving poetic devices, syllables and nothing less than me frantically attempting to rhyme, workman and engine in a ballad. However, through the deconstruction of eras and poetic literature choices across these initial four weeks, my understanding of poetry has broken past these assumptions.
Step one was none other than poetry analysis, I aimed to work on highlighting and identifying techniques and writing comprehensively. Explaining and analysing poetry is a whole new level of thinking.
From this, four prominent eras were deconstructed, ours being Elizabethan… SHAKESPEARE. This era is dissimilar to the others and focused on a tragedy (e.g. World War 1, Victorian etc; used poetry to advocate knowledge or affection). The era was commended for embellishment of English literature, as well as its exploration and expansion of peace, which is often referred to as “the golden age” of English literature. We focused on key poets like William Shakespeare, Edmund Spencer, Thomas Campion also looking in-depth into Sonnet 18. Analysing how the extended metaphor of a summer day reflected on Shakespeare’s unrequited love for his mistress. Using other poetic elements like personification and rhyme to appeal to the audience he wrote for in ways they couldn’t explain.
The first four weeks of this unit have been very beneficial in setting both a pace and expectation of what to achieve over the terms to come. Am I 100% confident thus far? No, but I’m propitious that across the semester the idea of twenty-minute presentation and performing an original piece may warm in.
Shayna Jahoots Takes On POETRY 