ABSTRACT
This chapter, in its first part, presents an account of the writing of a poem. For the author, during work for previous articles on the teaching of poetry, ‘poem’ has seemed most helpfully defined at least partly in terms of learning. The chapter presents a case study where a child is experimenting, with her feelings, with the world around her, and with her language. Using a suggestion of Sandy Brownjohn’s (in Does It Have to Rhyme?) the author had tried to demonstrate to children that there is more than one way of looking at something. The author says that the child hadwritten ten poems with him. The nine-year-old girl was brimming with verbal ideas, which sometimes flowed all too prolifically from her, rich and unconsidered; colourful and well-lit, but ill-defined and formless. The author encouraged the child for her poem which she wrote in twenty minutes and made some secretarial corrections on the work.
