Poetry

We are reading and writing poetry this term and the students have produced some lovely ones.
I want to share with you on such activity last week in which we read the following poem.

Names

‘I am Mark-want-to-be-a-warrior, son of Dad-know-it-all.’

I bend to greet him.  He is eight years old.

We are naming ourselves, in a poetry workshop, in Maydena.

‘Whistling Tree Tops,’ I say, ‘daughter of Joan-anxious-face.

So very pleased to meet you.’

‘My dad drives a Pearce-Louis log truck,’ Want-to-be boasts,

‘the biggest!  And so will I when I grow up, and then

everybody'd better keep out of my way!’

‘Jenny-travel-a-lot,’ a small neat, dark-eyed girl informs me,

‘and I am the daughter of Annette-spicy-hot.’  We all get new

     names.

Then we make a ritual; speak the names we hate –

outgrown baby tags, old insults, unwanted appellations –

write these down on strips of paper, then scrunch them

and throw them onto a pretend-fire in the middle of the room.

‘These we have finished with,’ I say, ‘I’ll take them home

and burn them in the sacred gully,’ and I do,

one quiet, quiet bush evening, mosquito droned, magpie chortled,

in dappled sunlight, on a pyre of oyster-bay pine

and gum twigs.  The long-legged shadows dance

as Pigsy, Bub-bub, Spastic, Brown-Eye and the rest

become a pile of ashes.  I poke them with a bracken stalk

for signs of life but they are dead.

Let nothing be done to harm the children

is an old and sacred law.

Terry Whitebeach

After reading this, we wrote down names we'd been called and would rather forget, then the names we wanted to be known by/for.  We stood around our own 'pretend fire' and threw in the bad names.  I promised the children I would take them home and burn them.  Below is a photo to show the names we didn't like being burnt under my sacred orange tree.

Today was another Golden Time at school and again I am blessed to have such wonderful students who use their hard-earned free time to make me something.  Check out my fridge - its showcases the creativity of your children.

 Thanks for having such delightful children!  Have a great weekend.