Inspirational Poet of the Year 2007

And the Kidsfreesouls Poet of Year 2007 is Josie Whitehead - a Yorkshire Teacher who influences children with her Poems on the web. She has embraced the latest technology and meets kids on Skype to read out her poem and interact with classrooms. Here's Kidsfreesouls Poet of Year 2007 - Inspirational Poet Page. Enjoy!

Poets often use the sounds of words to create effects in their poems with the most common method, using words that rhyme. The English Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins used a rhyme scheme in 'Pied Beauty' which goes abcabc dbcdc - a representing the first rhyme sound, b the second and c the third and so on.

We also often have the imagery style which refer to the sensations that language creates in the mind. Sensations of images - appealing to our sense of touch, hearing and visualizing. An American Poet Wallace Stevens has an Imaginery visuals in the stanzas of 'The Snow Man' which refer as 'Crusted with snow', 'shagged with ice', 'rough in the distant glitter' - all make sense the texture of things. 'Sound of winds', 'sound of few leaves' creates images of things heard.

And there is the most common means of creating poetry form is rhyme. Some are standard verse forms and one such form is the Sonnet. The Italian sonnet or the Petrarchan Sonnet. Josie Whitehead has experimented this form in some of her poems and has made use of the Petrarchan Sonnet. This consist of more rhymed lines than any other Sonnet. The Petrarchan Sonnet consist of an octave eight line stanza followed by a six line stanza. The rhyme scheme of the Octave is abbaabba. The sestet (six line stanza) rhyme scheme varies but often is cdecde or abcdcd. This style is influenced by Petrarch, a great Italian poet who had an unparalleled influence on world Literature who wrote more than 400 poems in Italian. Josie also is keen to use the Blank verse consisting of unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter to teach the children. Paradise Lost by John Milton is one example of a Blank Verse.

Well, I guess, children when asked to begin writing a poem, they always are first non responsive but later, make it a free verse - no rhyme scheme, no metre. Firstly, it is important to build a Vocabulary and if this is enhanced, Poetry can be a window to the Student Soul. Find more on Poetry and How to write a Poetry in the Poetry pages. Enjoy.

Btw, here's on Scrabulous - the Online Scrabble game craze leaving Game sellers at loss of word - in NYT.

- ilaxi patel
Ed, www.kidsfreesouls.com
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