How do you improve your performance?

In week 4 of this term, Angela visited my year 9 aspire English class again. This time, she helped us work on our performance skills, and gave us a chance to present a poem in our groups to the class. I participated in a number of activities which helped to improve certain aspects of performing. This included hand gestures, use of eye contact and body language. Angela also showed us a method to use when memorising our poetry: use a key (such as highlighter, underlining, circling) to identify where you will use emphasis and emotion in certain parts in your poem. This method will be very helpful in the coming weeks.

On the subject of group performances, I made a significant change during this poetry unit, and decided to move to another group. This is because I felt more comfortable with the topic of war and remembrance rather than feminism through the ages. This change helped me appreciate poetry more, because it is much more appealing when you are writing about something you care about, or have confidence in.

I have been working on a new poem for the new topic in the group. Here is a snippet of that poem:

How do we remember an echo of the past? Recounts, stories, memories from centuries will last Long into the future, forever and always with humankind We will continue the remembrance for those who have died

We might think about it occasionally, and hardly pass a thought, We don’t quite know the dangers, the things we never saw, We hear and understand, but never quite feel, We just don’t have enough experience to know the costs of war.

These past few weeks have been very key in developing my poetry and knowing what I want to do with it. Changing groups, getting feedback and improving my work is all part of the process of getting to the performance.

Answer to last blog’s riddle… Glass!

Riddle poetry for this blog… What comes once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years?