POETRY PHOBIA: TEACHING POETRY WRITING ON THINGS AROUND US WITH ANUKA’S THE BET WITH FATE

Abstract

Poetry is one genre of literature that does not attract many students’ interest because of its assumed complexity and abstract form. It is consequently neglected and left for a small group. At the primary school, teachers teach the younger ones to memorize nursery rhymes without guiding them to put down their thoughts, emotions, and events down as poems. So, poetry enjoys very little patronage at schools. This study consequently examines how to encourage learners to think critically and creatively with language to communicate information on events and things around them as poems. It assesses how to engage children in learning for self-expression by reading poems written on specific occasions and guiding them to communicate information received about something. The study adopts the Read and Explain (RAE), Listen and Learn (LAL) and Observe and Write (OAW) strategies to guide learners to enjoy poems written by a character in Anuka’s A Bet with Fate on things around,  observe their environment and write poems. It is expected that if children are engaged in reading and writing poems, potential child-authors who will contribute to national development will be raised. The study concludes also that students’ active participation in poetry reading and writing holds a great potential for their development of language proficiency, active creative sensitivity to issues around, aesthetic curiosity and maximum contribution to national development and adaption to entrepreneurship. Conscious teaching for creative writing can produce creative writers on any of the genres of literature.