ABSTRACT
Poetry is very like Vegemite – you either love it, or you hate it! But it need not be that way. For Jackie French, poetry is the ‘essence of being human’: ‘The moment someone first spoke poetry was the day our species became human’ (French, 2021, p. viii, cited in Murphy). Similarly, the English academic Donald Carter stated, ‘[A] child is born with a poetic voice’ (Carter 9, 1998, p. 2), and Vygotsky considered inner speech to have its closest parallel in poetry (Barrs, 2022, p. 190). For this reason, Edwin Creely (2022) refers to poetry as ‘a dialogic space of imaginative encounter’ (p. 8). In short, ‘poetry belongs to us all’ (Rosen, 2016, p. 6).
The teacher’s role is critical in modelling the reading of poetry and eliciting responses to poetry. Sally Murphy (2021, p. 3) suggests that poetry supports children’s language and vocabulary development, cognitive agility, appreciation of humour and acceptance of ambiguity. These are some reasons why poetry is such a valuable resource for learning, as well as being pleasurable in its own right. Along with suggestions for good sources of poetry, this chapter promotes the belief that poetry is pleasure and must be taught with pleasure. Above all, we need to create an environment in which the richness of poetry in all its forms can be shared and experienced.
