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Dispatches from the classroom, and life as a freelance Geographer.
Showing posts with label Haiku. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Haiku. Show all posts
National Poetry Day
I've been doing haiku landscapes with Year 7 this week...
Here's one I made earlier for National Poetry Day, which has the theme of water...
And here's one of my favourite poems and pieces of music: Sorley MacLean's Hallaig, with Martyn Bennett's music...
Hallaig from Neil Kempsell on Vimeo.
The film is an exploration and visual interpretation of the poem "Hallaig" by Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean. The poem originally written in Gaelic and translated describes the tragic loss and memories of a highland community on the Island of Raasay.
The film depicts symbols of life and time. That in Hallaig, there is something to protect. The woods become alive as women, love is presented as a hunter, and time an apparitional deer. The land of the living and the land of the dead become pervious to each other.
The aim of the film is to enlighten and enrich the words of the poem. The aim of creating this film is to educate, inform and raise awareness of the social problems people endured during the period of the Highland Clearances. To research these events of social history in Scotland, in greater depth through the exploration, interpretation and investigation of the poem's use of symbolism and meaning to depict tragedy and loss.
The clearances were virtually ignored for many years this century by writers, historians and academics, partly out of a new struggle towards statehood in Scotland. Devolution and The new Parliament being a new centre of focus and attention.
However in recent years there has been a great revival in Gaelic culture and a renewed interest in Highland History. I believe that The poet Sorley MacLean, when writing "Hallaig" saw the poem as representing and exploring what could be seen as a microcosm for other problems and injustices in the world. For example: Ireland, Africa [Zimbabwe], Bosnia, and also the homeless of Edinburgh".
Here's one I made earlier for National Poetry Day, which has the theme of water...
And here's one of my favourite poems and pieces of music: Sorley MacLean's Hallaig, with Martyn Bennett's music...
Hallaig from Neil Kempsell on Vimeo.
The film is an exploration and visual interpretation of the poem "Hallaig" by Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean. The poem originally written in Gaelic and translated describes the tragic loss and memories of a highland community on the Island of Raasay.
The film depicts symbols of life and time. That in Hallaig, there is something to protect. The woods become alive as women, love is presented as a hunter, and time an apparitional deer. The land of the living and the land of the dead become pervious to each other.
The aim of the film is to enlighten and enrich the words of the poem. The aim of creating this film is to educate, inform and raise awareness of the social problems people endured during the period of the Highland Clearances. To research these events of social history in Scotland, in greater depth through the exploration, interpretation and investigation of the poem's use of symbolism and meaning to depict tragedy and loss.
The clearances were virtually ignored for many years this century by writers, historians and academics, partly out of a new struggle towards statehood in Scotland. Devolution and The new Parliament being a new centre of focus and attention.
However in recent years there has been a great revival in Gaelic culture and a renewed interest in Highland History. I believe that The poet Sorley MacLean, when writing "Hallaig" saw the poem as representing and exploring what could be seen as a microcosm for other problems and injustices in the world. For example: Ireland, Africa [Zimbabwe], Bosnia, and also the homeless of Edinburgh".
Weather haikus - Living Geography....
Back in 2008, I did an activity which involved students writing HAIKU about extreme weather. I put it on Slideshare, and it's been viewed over 3000 times.
A HAIKU is a type of 'poem', which has a tightly controlled structure of syllables.
The structure is usually a total of seventeen syllables organised in three lines. Sometimes this is 5 - 5 - 7, and sometimes 5 - 7- 5
I read today that Arizona's Department of Transportation is using the writing of Haikus as a way of warning residents about a danger to motorists: the dust storms called HABOOBs.
Writers are posting their offerings using the hashtag #haboobhaiku, highlighting the danger of attempting to drive through the roiling dust storms which can block out the sun, and cut highway visibility to zero."The challenge ... is really designed to raise awareness that this is a problem and that drivers shouldn't expect to sail through a dust storm," Department spokesman Timothy Tait told Reuters."They need to think about it when they see that dust forming on the horizon," he added.
Here's one example:
Brown swirls obscure all / Drivers know not to panic / Pull aside, stay alive
And here's an ADOT video...
Could you do better ? Why not tweet your own ideas...
What else could this idea be used for ? What else could we describe ?
A HAIKU is a type of 'poem', which has a tightly controlled structure of syllables.
The structure is usually a total of seventeen syllables organised in three lines. Sometimes this is 5 - 5 - 7, and sometimes 5 - 7- 5
I read today that Arizona's Department of Transportation is using the writing of Haikus as a way of warning residents about a danger to motorists: the dust storms called HABOOBs.
Writers are posting their offerings using the hashtag #haboobhaiku, highlighting the danger of attempting to drive through the roiling dust storms which can block out the sun, and cut highway visibility to zero."The challenge ... is really designed to raise awareness that this is a problem and that drivers shouldn't expect to sail through a dust storm," Department spokesman Timothy Tait told Reuters."They need to think about it when they see that dust forming on the horizon," he added.
Watch the news report here:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Here's one example:
Brown swirls obscure all / Drivers know not to panic / Pull aside, stay alive
And here's an ADOT video...
Could you do better ? Why not tweet your own ideas...
What else could this idea be used for ? What else could we describe ?
When was the last time you wrote a poem ?
In Bristol yesterday, I attended a session at UWE led by Mark Jones, which related to a forthcoming article in 'Teaching Geography', written in association with Bernadette Fitzgerald: the PGCE English tutor at UWE.
The article "Town as text" explores the way that urban areas can be described using poetry and other literary forms.
There was a really impressive display of geographical poetry in the School of Education, which Mark had put together, and which related partly to the excellent article on Place by Tim Cresswell published in the GA's journal GEOGRAPHY. I referred to this for my Norfolk GA session "Very flat Norfolk" earlier in the year.
There were some examples of Alice Oswald's river poetry, and some excellent images to accompany them. One poem I particularly liked was Philip Gross's poem on the Severn from his collection "The Water Table".
Mark explored the use of the haiku poetry form: a form which can be used well with students as it is fairly straightforward to develop and rework. I will use some of these ideas as part of my workshop at the SAGT Conference later in the year.
There were some other good ideas for capturing literacy, including street names, 360 degree views and questions.
Mark was interested in the positioning of responses to place on a continuum between English and Geography, and what a response somewhere in the middle of these would look like.
Have you used poetry in your geography lessons ? Please tell me about it....
To show willing, here's an example of a HAIKU I used when teaching about weather and climate a few years back. The students (Year 8) then used VOKI to create an avatar who would speak the lines, and then embed them into a blog for showing to other classmates. It was an ICT lesson, but as always I subverted it to being a geography lesson as well...
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