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I was a teacher for a very long time and  found that if kids were introduced to
poetry as something that they did rather than learned, that poetry was something
to be heard, that poetry could be done together, and that poetry was something
that their teacher loved (and loved to spout), kids loved poetry. 
The trouble in schools is that poetry arrives on the curriculum too late, too hard, and
outside of daily experience.  (Caesar is not for grade nine girls!).  Unfortunately too
many of those who make school programs have had bad teachers and bad introductions
to poems to bad poetry in fine print.  Fran

Clayton Hansen wrote:
[log in to unmask]"> ALI ALIZADEH wrote:
I'm sorry if I'm re-opening a closed discussion here, but I haven't been on the list
for too long.
There was a brief discussion on the list at the time..October last year.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is the 'Young People Against Poetry' the same campaign
that was staged by the Queensland University Student Union magazine Semper last year
in Brisbane?
I don't know of their origins Ali.. you've probably pegged them though.  The brief coverage on the nightly news showed a plane and a banner (as you mentioned) and three or four forlorn individuals sitting on the steps of the Arts Gallery or State Library.  I remember the plane, and that one of the individuals was weraing a common, blue, garden bucket on his head.  He is perhaps the one to ask the questions of.
I will hunt down (not literally; no need to call the cops yet) the people
responsible for the incident during the Brisbane Writers' Festival for a few
questions,
That would be interesting I think.
Rest assure, I did fly off the handle and did my best to change their minds and itended up ugly; but that was nothing compared to hearing that our student union has decided to withdraw funding from the literary journal Veranda.
This is particularly baffling as the journal supports writers and editors on campus and in far off places like Warwick.  Maybe if Verandah had a comics page?  Though I thought Edward Burger made a good fist of producing some amusing illustrations last year!
lecturers who tell their students 'poetry is dead'. I have had a few of them, though.
Malouf ends his piece in the CM with:  I wonder, coming back to those Young People Against Poetry, whether their quarrel is really with poetry; whether what they object to isn't rather the way they are asked to read it, the way it is presented to them as a distant and abstract thing.

And here I think Kari was close to the mark in asserting that poetry, in its many disguises, like song lyrics can be very meaningful, or more meaningful, less distant, less abstract because it has an entry point into our (albeit sensationalist, media driven) culture.  Who has time to read?  I do, or attempt to, because it rewards me. I have developed a relationship between myself and poetry and short fiction over time and well and truly after my own schooling.  I'm just not sure that forcing, (roting) poetry into the lives of children is the ultimate answer.  The cod-liver oil argument, I guess.  I would love to know what regular performers of poetry think on the issue of the importance of rote or memorizing in their own work/gigs etc.

Nice to have you on the list Ali and thanks to you, Randolph and Kari for commenting.
 

Clayton