When? What? And Where? Poetry

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Teaching students to write poetry isn’t easy. There seem to be so many rules, such as the way the poem should rhyme. Should the first line rhyme with the second, or should it rhyme with the third and the second line rhyme with the fourth? Or sometimes we see something so strikingly beautiful that describing it in rhythmic rhymes doesn’t seem quite right. How can you encourage your students to record what they’ve seen, or tasted, or touched, or smelled, or heard? How about trying a When, What and Where poem?
It is very easy. Ask your students to imagine walking home and having to go through a small woods. Describe the scene for them:

It is late afternoon and it is getting dark. You’re not scared but you begin to walk a little faster. Suddenly you hear an owl. You know it’s an owl because it is a deep call that sounds like "to wit to whooooo, to wit to whooooo.’’ You stand still and feel a little shiver go through you. The owl’s call seems to have gone right into your body. Now you are a little scared, but you are also pleased that you recognized the owl’s cry and you feel great because it is such a splendid and powerful sound.

Now how to describe all that without the words tumbling out this way and that? Try a When, What and Where poem. It is just like answering three questions—When did you hear the cry? Late afternoon. What did you hear? An owl’s cry. Where did you hear it? In the deep woods. Let’s put all that together:

Yes, this really is a poem!
And not only a poem, but a good poem, because it tells everything that happened in a simple way, yet the reader can feel the writer’s fear and excitement and pleasure, just by reading it.
People have been writing this kind of poem for many hundreds of years in Japan and they call them haiku. Of course, when Japanese people write haiku, they don’t think When? What? and Where?; they just write down what they are seeing, or hearing, or smelling, or touching, or tasting. They write as if it is happening to them at this very moment. Usually it is only one thing that they write about, one moment in time when they are surprised, or delighted, or saddened.
But until your students have written many, many such small poems and can do so easily, answering When? What? and Where? is the simplest way to practice.
Have your students try another one.

Supposing you are on the way to school and pass a bakery. You can almost smell and taste the fresh bread and cakes in the window. They look so good!

When? On the way to school. What? Fresh bread and cakes. Where? In the bakery window. Putting it together:

You are going to school so you can’t stop to buy bread or cakes, nor can you eat them now, because you don’t have time, even though you would like to very much. Perhaps on the way home....but then they won’t be so fresh and won’t taste so good. All these thoughts might come from reading this small poem, and that is just what the writer wanted to tell the reader.
Have them try some more When? What? and Where? poems always beginning with something they are sensing right now—something they are smelling, or tasting, or touching, or hearing, or looking at. They’ll feel good that they can write such satisfying little poems.

Naomi Beth Wakan is the author of more than fifteen educational titles; many of them still available through Pacific Edge Publishing. She lives, writes and paints on Gabriola Island, BC.
www.naomiwakan.com