ABSTRACT
Children of the twenty-first century inhabit a world where they are surrounded by texts; some in print and some screen-based. This means that children are familiar with multimodality: texts that combine words and pictures, movement and sound. Teachers need to recognise this and support children in engaging with multimodality, both as readers and writers. Using shape poems, sometimes called concrete poems, is an exciting way to do this. Concrete poems are designed graphically to position poetry in dramatic ways on the white space of the page. In reading these poems we cannot ignore the graphic form; it is an important dimension of what the writer is trying to say.
