Articulating the auditory imagination: when children talk about poetry they hear

1. Articulating the auditory imagination: when children talk about poetry they hear ‘rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere’ Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA

2. Interpreting classroom responses to poetry john.gordon@uea.ac.uk Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA

3. The details outlined here are more fully outlined in papers published in English Teaching: Practice and Critique, available here: http://edlinked.soe.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/view.php?author=true&id=673&p=1 Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA

4. Not understanding poetry - experience Nature of poetry Auditory imagination Poetry in schools / curriculum Pupil responses Empirical research : Conversation Analysis Map Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA

5. It was rhythm that seduced me into liking poetry in the beginning: clearly identifiable rhythms at first, in my early childhood, when I fell for nursery rhymes and Sunday school hymns … and then, in my teens, the more subtle rhythms of poets I was taught at school or discovered for myself. (It’s sometimes hard to separate rhythm from tone, in its effects. I remember being transported, at about fourteen, by the poignancy of Blake’s line in The Book of Thel: ‘Art thou a Worm? Image of weakness, art thou but a Worm?’ I’d repeat it to myself until it seemed to be nothing but rhythm; but perhaps it was the tender, pitying tone that so appealed to me. To talk of one element in isolation is always a little risky.)’ Fleur Adcock Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA

6. Two traditions of poetry: ‘the referential, propositional, and mimetic aspect of language’ 2 words as ‘pure sound form or visual form or both’ Preminger and Brogan Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetryDr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA

7. the substantial realisation of poetry in the graphic mode delimits the nature of poetic encounter allowed to pupils in the classroom, with the consequence that the knowledge and experience substantiated only in the phonic mode is not available to them One tradition in schools? Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA

8. T.S.Eliot: auditory imagination Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word…

9. Do not let the people who set examinations kid you that you are any nearer to understandinga poem when you have parsed and analysed every sentence, scanned every line, looked up the words in the Oxford Dictionary and the allusions in a library of reference books. That sort of knowledge will make it harder for youto understand the poem because, when you listen to it, you will be distracted by a multitude of irrelevant scraps of knowledge. You will not hear the meaning, which is in the sound. Basil Bunting Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA

10. Liz Lochhead Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA

11. Who likes me enough • Not to nitpick • Not to nag and • Not to interrupt ‘cause I call the treason • A woman with the Good Grace • To be struck dumb • By me Sweet Reason. Yes – • A Man Likes A Good Listener • A Real • Man • Likes a Real Good Listener • Women yap yap yap • Verbal Diarrhoea is a Female Disease • Woman she spread she rumours round she • Like Philadelphia Cream Cheese. • Oh • Bossy Women Gossip • Girlish Women Giggle • Women natter, women nag • Women niggle niggle niggle • Men talk. • Men • Think First, Speak Later • Men talk. • Men Talk (Rap) • Women • Rabbit rabbit rabbit women • Tattle and titter • Women prattle • Women waffle and witter • Men talk. Men Talk. • Women into Girl Talk • About Women’s Trouble • Trivia ’n’ Small talk • They yap and they babble • Men talk. Men Talk. • Women gossip Women giggle • Women niggle-niggle-niggle • Men talk. • Women yatter • Women chatter • Women chew the fat, women spill the beans • Women aint been takin’ • The oh-so Good Advice in them • Women’s Magazines. • A Man Likes A Good Listener. • Oh yeah • I like A Woman Liz Lochhead Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA

12. Wo:men (0.5) > rabbit rabbit rabbit < women ta:ttle and titter (.) .h women pr*attle women waffle and witter (0.7) .hh↑me::n talk: (0.5) .hh°↑me::n talk:°(0.7) >wo↑men< into girl talk! about women’s trouble(.) .hhtri:::via:ansmall talk they yap and they babble(.) .hhh ↓me::n talk:: (0.5) me::n talk:: wiiii↑men ↑↑>gossip women giggle women ↑>niggle,niggle,niggle!<<(.) men talk:.(.02) women↑↑yatter(0.2) women (0.2) ↑chatter (0.2) women ↑chew the fat (0.2) women spill: the ↓beans .hhh wo↑men aint been takin the ↑↑>ohsogood advice .hh in<(.)↓them womEN’S MAGAZINES:: (0.5) .hh a man (.)↓likes:: (.) a (.) GOOD:: (.) LISTENER:. .hhh oh yeah .hh i ↑>like a woman who likes me enough >not to nitpick not to nag< (0.3) .hh ↑and not: to ↑INterrupt cos: i >↑call that treason< (.).hhh a ↓woman with ↑the (.)>ggood grace to be struck dumb (0.5) .hh by mah:::: ↑sweet reason .hh yeehhhremember (1.0) ((swallowing noise))= Liz Lochhead Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA

13. Conversation Analysis • representation of intonation, volume and pace • affords attention to poems as audio texts for analytic purposes • renders children’s collaborative responses in situated, social and public contexts of classrooms • representation of talk-in-interaction • appropriateness for scrutinising pupils’ responses to poetry

14. Conversation Analysis Match of a verbally-oriented method to the oral mode of poetry >> can inform poetry pedagogy The voiced performance of the poem as the first turn in each extended interaction - by implication to regard the voice as a participant and as a likely origin of content and topics to which listeners might orientate

15. Douglas Barnes • Language in the Secondary Classroom (Barnes et al, 1969). •  Exploratory talk • Differentiated attentiveness An enquiry into the distinctive ‘pedagogical invitation’ (Segall, 2004) of any poem encountered in sound.

16. T1: differentiated attentiveness

17. Douglas Barnes Differentiated attentiveness • Pupil A refers to where the ‘singing’ occurs - sensitivity to shift in the manner of performance. • position of this contribution (first volunteered item) implies salience of this perception for pupil • Pupil A elaboration (? ) that ‘the songsor:t of ge:ts people involved’ (Turn 15) • Turn 16 - pupil locates word exemplifying manipulation of sound. Elongation of initial ‘s’ sound and ‘ow’ sound in ‘slow’ as if to embody the qualities of ‘slow’ in his utterance. • illustrates awareness of variations of sound in the performance. • understanding of function of variation: ‘it’s like emphasising it’.

18. Douglas Barnes Differentiated attentiveness Pupils can attribute meaning to the manipulation of sound in response to heard poems, taking an interest in the ‘slowness’ of the performance at times to reveal interpretations of the mode of presentation within the frame of their own knowledge. Their attention has been directed by sound: ‘differentiated attentiveness’ is a matter of learning, not just control.

19. T2: public language / pedagogic device

20. Basil Bernstein the pedagogic device (1996, p. 39) the how of pedagogic discourse - more interest in the “relay” of pedagogy than information itself. public language (1958/2010) “social relationship where meaning is implicit, where what is not said, when it is not said, and paradoxically, how it is not said, form strategic orienting cues”. linguistic codes

21. Bernstein’s codes restricted code“ritualistic modes of communication”, precludes signalling of individual difference other than “through variations in extra-verbal signals”, emphasis on “here and now” (Rosen 1974, p. 5), context-bound and tending to the particular. elaborated code- prediction less possible at a syntactic level, requiring “its members to select from their linguistic resources a verbal arrangement which closely fits its referents”. • universalistic and context-free, aiming at meaning for all, creating condensed symbols, and tending towards rationality. Such a code is favoured in the pedagogic device.

22. Restricted?

23. Restricted? Necessary. The transcript: appears pupil is operating within a restricted code: • his response, in repeating exactly a phrase from Lochhead’s poem, has a ritualistic character; • he appears to communicate within limited syntactic options; • he does not enter into the extended verbal signalling associated with the elaborated code; • his contribution is context-bound, directly related to the heard poem and the immediate discussion; • his contribution may assume that his peers understand his intent due to the shared context

24. Articulating the auditory imagination: when children talk about poetry they hear ‘rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere’ Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA