ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the use of an Overarching Pedagogical Metaphor as a teaching practice for writer-educators in schools. It explores how by defining one’s own poetics and creating this broad framework, writers can enhance their facilitation of Spoken Word. This chapter focuses on metaphor as a safe framework for students from challenging inner-city schools to explore trauma, and discover the life changing effects of poetic epiphany and performance as a means for personal growth, crossing new imaginative and socio-developmental boundaries.
The author draws on the body as a pedagogical metaphor to explore poetics, as the poem takes on human form. Through the critical analysis of direct interaction with educators and students in joint acts of meaning-making, the practical application of this method allows students to develop a complex poetic, moving away from the passive descriptive and towards the three-dimensional aspect of the metaphorical. The author’s findings highlight the importance of dialogic pedagogies, which are overruling traditional methods of teaching in which student voices are barely acknowledged, and puts forward the use of mindfulness to enhance positive facilitation and guidance over outdated dictatorial methods.
This chapter also foregrounds the importance of the Spoken Word Education Program at Goldsmiths University.
