Poetry is everywhere, across language and culture. Poems are timeless. They can tell stories of events or describe beautiful vistas. Poems connect us with the past and the world around us through universal emotions like love, hate, grief and wonder.

There is no denying that poetry can be very powerful, so why is it absent from the English classrooms? Students often balk at the idea of studying poetry in class. They believe that their language skills are an insurmountable impediment to understanding poetry in English.  However, it can be done, and there are lots of resources online to help and encourage. For example, through video-poems students analyze a poem and relate it to different pictures to create a video-poem. Here you have an example:

I am: Introducing ourselves

Our first task will be an introduction of ourselves. In order to do so, first we are going to read a Prezi presentation of the poem I Am by the English poet of the XVIII Century John Clare.






In this poem we have someone introducing himself. We can learn many things about the speaker by analysing the poem. For example:

-Our speaker is a very lonely man. In the first two lines the speaker tells us that nobody cares about him, or even knows who is anymore, and that his friends have abandoned him.

- Misery gives our speaker a death wish. But he doesn't say anything about killing himself.

- He's a religious or spiritual person. He's not really afraid of death because he's confident that he will meet God, his creator.


As you can see, poetry can be a good way of talking about something or someone in a beautiful way.


Now you are going to become a poet. It's time to introduce yourself. How? Your task will be writing an "I Am" poem about yourself. Here you have an example: