Poetry Unlocked: Developing Skills for Reading and Understanding Poetry

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General Information

   

Authors: Elaine Hamilton and Robin Farr.

Extext:    156 pages..
ISBN: 9780975199688
RRP: $24.95 .

 

Poetry Unlocked: Developing Skills for Reading and Understanding Poetry is a secondary school text written by experienced classroom English teachers. The book clearly explains the techniques, devices, forms and styles of poetry and illustrates these concepts through a range of poems accessible to secondary school students. In each chapter, students are encouraged to apply their knowledge about poetic forms and devices using a variety of activities – oral and written, individual and group.
This text will help students to:

  • learn about the importance and relevance of poetry.
  • increase their knowledge of the ‘tools’, devices, forms and styles that poets use to make their message more effective.
  • increase their knowledge of the poet’s purpose and point of view in writing poetry.
  • analyse poems.
  • create their own poetry.

The text is clearly organised with a summary at the end of each chapter and a summary of key terms at the end of the book. It is not necessary to work through each chapter in sequence. However, previous learning is reinforced by revisiting earlier concepts in later chapters.
The text contains over 100 poems indexed by title and author.

 

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About the Authors

Elaine Hamilton is an experienced teacher / librarian and author with many educational titles to here name. Elaine is the co-author of Form and Feeling a leading a senior secondary poetry text used in Australian schools for many years.

Robin Farr is an experienced teacher / librarian and ESL teacher, having worked for many years in resource based learning environments. Robin is also a co-author of several texts at the junior secondary level.

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Table of Contents

WHY IS POETRY SPECIAL?
1 The importance and relevance of poetry
2 Themes and subjects in poetry
3 The poet’s purpose and point of view

UNDERSTANDING HOW POETS CREATE POETRY
The sounds of poetry

4 Alliteration
5 Rhyme
6 Rhythm
7 Onomatopoeia
8 Assonance, consonance, word sounds

Word pictures in poetry
9 Simile
10 Metaphor
11 Personification
12 Imagery
13 Symbolism and allusion

The shape of poetry: poetic forms and styles
14 Syllable poems: haiku, tanka, syllable cinquains
15 Couplets and quatrains
16 Ballads
17 Shape poems, cinquains and limericks
18 Narrative poetry
19 Lyric poetry
20 Free verse, blank verse, prose poetry
21 Dramatic monologue
22 Sonnets THEORY INTO PRACTICE
23 How to ‘read’ a poem
24 ‘Reading’ poems: practise your skills
25 How to create your own poems

Useful poetry websites
Answers
Summary of definitions
Index of poems
Index of poets
Acknowledgments

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Poem
Poet

16-bit intel 8088 chip
A cello
from America, America
Autumn
Ballad of the drover
Bamboo grove
Birthdays Anonymous
Bread and vegemite
Brooms
Child’s song in spring E
Cinderella
Clancy of the Overflow
Cramped in that funnelled hole
Daffodils
Dandelion
Death of a whale
Dilemma
Do not stand at my grave and weep
Doctor Bell
Doctor to patient
Does it matter?
Dreams in the dusk
Driving motor-way madly
Drowning in wheat
Dying quietly
Eaglehawk
Eliza crossing the river
Family holiday
Feelings about words
Fog
Gulliver in Lilliput
Her face
Hidden things
Hiroshima
Home
I don’t want to die
I wish
Intolerance
Introduction to poetry

Charles Bukowski
Richard Lester
Saadi Youssef (tr. from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa)
T.E. Hulme
Henry Lawson
Basho
Blind A.R.D. Fairburn
Anonymous
Dorothy Aldis
Nesbit
Sylvia Plath
A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson
Wilfred Owen
William Wordsworth
Julie Lechevsky
J. Blight
Michael Dugan
Mary Frye
Anonymous
Bruce Dawe
Siegfried Sassoon
Carl Sandburg
Jill Campbell
John Kinsella
Pat Moon
William Hart-Smith
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Raymond Wilson
Mary O’Neill
Carl Sandburg
Alexander Pope
Sir Arthur Gorges
Paul Kelly
Anonymous
J. L. Malone
Anonymous
Neil Hornsleth
Oodgeroo of the tribe Noonuccal
Billy Collins

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