Anthony Horowitz:Hello, I'm Anthony Horowitz. Are you a poet, who doesn't know it? You could be, we all could be. Writing poetry is different to other forms of creative writing. Fiction often involves wrestling with characters and careful structuring.
Anthony Horowitz:Some say poetry can involve anything you like or nothing and if you are writing a poem, you have total freedom to play around with words and to use techniques like alliteration and repetition.
Anthony HorowitzAnd the point to writing poetry? Well, for that let's join writer and comedian Griff Rhys Jones. Dealing with revealing that it's all about feeling and now he needs some healing.
Griff Rhys Jones:Philip Larkin thought that the principle aim or intention of a poem should be to encapsulate, to evoke in fact, a very unique and specific emotional feeling and that without it, the poem was dead.
Griff Rhys Jones:So if great poems do bring us those unique feelings what's their value? What can they do for us? I've come to the poetry doctor to find out.
Poetry Doctor:So Mr Jones. What exactly seem to be your symptoms?
Griff Rhys Jones:Well doctor, let's say, because it's in the public record, let's say I have a tendency to be grumpy. Do you think there are poems that I could use which would help to cure me of that-- Soothe me of that disability?
Poetry Doctor:I'm absolutely sure. Now what I think with this is that really, first of all, there are two stages to the cure. The first one is to actually get really in touch with those emotions. And the second part is to once having vented them to try and bring them back under control.
Poetry Doctor:So I've actually got a poem which is going to be very cathartic to read and it's just kind of limbering up your anger muscles.
Griff Rhys Jones:Good.
Poetry Doctor:So this is an extract from King Lear. What I want you to do is really channel that fury.
Griff Rhys Jones:"Blow winds and crack your cheeks. Rage, blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks. You sulphurous and thought-executing fires. Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts.
Griff Rhys Jones:Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder. Smite flat the thick rotundity o' th' world. Crack natures molds, all germens spill at once that make ingrateful man!"
Griff Rhys Jones:The difficulty is that I think it's the saddest thing I've ever read. I don't think it's just about anger, I think it's about an old man being Aah! That there's a sort of sense of his emotion is so painful.
Poetry Doctor:Exactly and that really is why I wanted you to read it because what I'm worried about, as well as the increase in your blood pressure, is the premature aging effect of becoming this grumpy old man constantly being overtaken by your anger.
Griff Rhys Jones:Right.
Poetry Doctor:So the next poem I have is a haiku by Oshima Ryota and it does exactly the same thing but in a much more concentrated form.
Poetry Doctor:'Cause a Haiku is like It's a portable thing you can keep in your pocket. You can keep it in your head and it's very short so you'll be able to remember it.
Poetry Doctor:And because it's only three lines you have to really think about the breath and where it comes and that should actually have an even more of a calming, instant effect.
Poetry Doctor:So it's the equivalent of counting to ten or sitting yourself on the naughty step.
Griff Rhys Jones:Bad tempered I got back then, in the garden a willow tree.
Griff Rhys Jones:Bit Japanese for me.
Poetry Doctor:LAUGHS
Griff Rhys Jones:Well I think we may be getting closer to poetry's effectiveness. It uses heightened language to toy with our emotions. Politicians and preachers 'have always recognised this power of poetry to transport us. Its philosophy? Big ideas in musical form.
Video summary
What is the point of writing poetry? What is the value of poetry? How is it different to other forms of creative writing?
Writer and comedian Griff Rhys Jones meets the ‘poetry doctor’ and uses ideas from Philip Larkin, Shakespeare’s King Lear and Japanese haiku poet Oshima Ryota to show how poetry can be a powerful way of evoking emotional feelings through philosophy and big ideas.
To understand poetry’s effectiveness, Jones considers the way that heightened language can toy with emotions, acknowledging the way that politicians and preachers also recognise and use the power of poetry.
Teacher Notes
Students could practice performing haiku, or other poetic forms, thinking about breath, pace and pause to create emotive readings.
Students could write emotion-inspired haiku poems, linking an emotion with an object.
Students could use the clip to begin discussion about the value of poetry and why it should or shouldn’t be included in the curriculum
This clip will be relevant for teaching English Language at KS3 and KS4 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and National 4 and 5 in Scotland.
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