Enthusing Kids with Poetry

[Leanne]

In my house, I was always led to believe that my mother was the "smart" one (because she'd worked in a bank and knew lots of obscure Scrabble words) and my dad was the "dumb" one (because he'd left school early to join the Navy). Yet as my ability to read reached accord with being tall enough to reach the kitchen sink, my dad would get out our book of Banjo Paterson and we'd read a stanza each while doing the dishes. Once meter is in your blood, you can't get it out (I'm assuming, naturally, because there's no way I'd ever try). We also had Eisteddfods every year in primary school (ages 5-12), competing against other schools in music, dance, theatre and poetry -- we'd have to do a poem as a class and some people were selected to do one individually. Because rhyme and meter are mnemonics and keys to how a poem should be read, our choices were always strong in both. My favourite of these was the wonderful Tarantella by Hilaire Belloc, which I can still recite almost entirely to this day, as well as my second favourite The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes (which I always use as a lesson in metaphor, because I just love "the moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas").

So anyway, my poor old dumb dad, who can't do crosswords and has always been in some kind of menial job -- still is, and he's 60 this year -- is responsible for inflicting poetry upon me... and now the rest of the world!