Joseph Coelho:
Poetry can be a wonderful way to express your emotions. When you are angry, you can write an angry poem. When you’re happy, you can write a happy poem. When I’ve had sad times, I’ve written sad poems and it has really helped.
Sometimes I read a poem and it makes me feel a certain way. It might make me laugh or it might make me angry.
The sea levels are rising.
The plastic’s piling high.
The ice caps are melting
and we’re all wondering why!
I get angry when I think about climate change and pollution. Writing those emotions down in a poem in a poem can help and when someone else reads it they might might feel what I feel and maybe change their behaviour.
Sometimes I like to express my emotions by imagining they were people. What would they wear? How would they move? How would they speak?
Sadness slumps down the street
In an anorak of pouring rain.
Sloshing through crowds who can’t see him.
Blubbering words that no one will hear.
By turning emotions into people, we personify the emotions, by describing them as if they were human beings. It can be a lot of fun… But sometimes I like to just write exactly how I feel…
The day I finished the race,
I felt incredible.
My face ached from grinning.
My legs felt sloshy from running.
When I got my medal,
I yelped with joy
And felt like I could swallow the sun.
Many poems have a range of emotions. They change like the tides. They might start out nervous but end up confident.
I stepped out onto the stage with shaking knees.
My palms and pits were wetter than an ocean.
I looked at the audience.
I opened my mouth and began to sing
And my knees stopped shaking.
I felt strong like a tree,
Rooted to the stage.
I started to laugh
And my laughter filled the room.
I’ve written many poems about real events. Poems that have shared insights into memories, memories from when I was young. Memories about being on a beach on holiday. Happy memories about beachcombing and rockpooling. Memories that were scary, about a time I swam out too far and got scared that I could drown.
The water was calm and deep,
I didn’t realise how deep.
I tried to touch the bottom
And my toes scraped nothing
But deep, black, swallowing water.
I panicked! I was far from the shore.
The tide started to rise,
My heart started to crash.
I had to get back to dry land.
Poets often write poems about special events or important occasions. Maybe a friend’s birthday, or the fear of a bully, or the excitement of winning a prize. It really helps when creating your own poems.
I also like to create emotion riddles where I write phrases that relate to an emotion without ever saying what the emotion is and seeing if my audience can guess. How about this?
My emotion is a giant knickerbocker glory,
Smothered in every type of chocolate
Sprinkled with sunshine jelly drops.
Did you guess what emotion I was thinking of?
I wonder what others I can come up with.
Video summary
Poet Joseph Coelho investigates how poetry can be used to express emotions and feelings.
He explores the nuances of emotions and how we identify them in the written form, considering the ways language is used in poetry to affect the reader or engage their attention, for example: expressing emotion through personification in order to help personal developmental expression.
He aims to encourage the use of emotion in children's creative writing by exploring how to incorporate emotional, personal events into your poems.
Teacher Notes
Ideas for use in the class
Before watching:
Talk to the children about different feelings. You might have a range of feeling words available or a range of photographs that represent feelings such as happy, sad, excited, surprised, angry, lonely, afraid. Have a discussion about personal experiences of these feelings, can the children remember a specific time they have felt like this? Where were they? What were they doing? Who were they with?
Now read a poem that presents a certain feeling:
Reading list for Key Stage 1 (ages 5-7):
Lost by Michael Rosen
Reading list for Key Stage 2 (ages 7-9):
Liar by Rachel Rooney, Night Journey by Kate Wakeling, Waiting for Snow by Jennifer Watson, Gingerbread Man by Joseph Coelho
Key Stage 2 (ages 9-11):
What the teacher said when asked: What er we avin for geography, Miss? by John Agard, In the Land of Giants by George Szirtes, The Taste of a Biscuit by AF Harrold, When Granny by Valerie Bloom, Isn’t My Name Magical? by James Berry, Heights by Aoife Mannix
Next steps
Read the poem aloud and take children’s initial feedback, how is the person in the poem feeling? How do you know? Have you ever felt like this? Now re-read the poem, and look for words and phrases that exemplify the feeling in the poem.
Mark these in the text and take ideas from the children as to why they think these are effective in sharing the feeling of being lost and alone.
Now watch the clip
Ask the children to look back at the different emotions and to picture a time when they have experienced this emotion. It might help to give time, space and resources for them to be able to draw this moment in time to create a clear image of the moment.
Now encourage the children to overlay the image they have created with a piece of tracing paper upon which to write words and phrases which explore the moment and the emotions evoked. Use these words and phrases to build up a draft of a free verse poem that helps the reader to picture the moment and feel the emotions you were feeling in the moment.
Read these aloud to check for sense, meaning and flow, then present these in a scrap book anthology. Read the poems aloud and see if other children can guess the emotions evoked in the poems.
This short film will be relevant for teaching English at primary school.
How to perform poetry. video
Joseph Coelho explores all the different ways you can perform a poem.
How to have fun writing poetry. video
Joseph Coelho explores onomatopoeia, phonics and all the ways you can have fun writing a poem.
How to write poetry about your life. video
Joe Coelho explains how to write poetry about experience.
Playing with words. video
Joseph Coelho explores how poetic devices can enable children to develop their literacy skill.
How to understand a poem. video
Joseph Coelho looks at how poems make you feel and what they mean to you.
Does poetry need to rhyme? video
Joseph Coelho shows that poetry doesn’t have to rhyme, but when it does, it can be inventive and witty.
Poetry formats. video
Joseph Coelho explores haiku, limericks, sonnets and varying forms of poetry.
Making pictures with words. video
Joseph Coelho shows us how to utilise figurative and descriptive language to the best effect.
How are music and poetry connected? video
Joseph Coelho demonstrates how many of the elements that make up poems are often mirrored in music.
