Shirley Xiao, Shenzhen College of International Education

The night before my fifth “Rad Poets Society” (English poetry camp for Chinese children) session, I was busy creating a new and much easier tutorial plan for the students, deleting poems and analyses from my previous lectures’ contents. These sixth-graders from rural primary schools had just started learning English. I worried that they couldn’t engage in class, but was also excited to present them with the new and intriguing world of English poetry.

“What’s the most essential thing in poetry-writing?” I teased them with a question at the outset of the lesson. My younger self would undoubtedly say “rhymes,” focusing on the formal and structural requirements of the genre.

However, these kids gave me mind-blowing answers: “emotions,” “imagination,” “creativity,” “blending with the environment” and “inspiration.”

To my astonishment, their answers summed up the evolution in English poetry, which progressed from the Romantic Era to the Enlightenment, and then to the Victorian Era. How could they intuitively grasp the essence of English poetry even before they had commenced reading their first poem?

This only consolidated my belief that children are naturals and possess an innate ability to write poetry. Perhaps, it is because they have never read any poems that they were able to forget the form and see the truth underneath.

Another thing that struck me was their constraint and shyness perplexed with an eagerness to learn. Together, we read Dr. Seuss’ book “Green Eggs and Ham” as a warm-up. They pronounced “box” as “bokesi,” and “fox” as “fokesi.”

Their intonation was also awkward, oftentimes ending a question without the common rising tone. While trying to teach them the “standard” pronunciations, I couldn’t help but feel a liking for their cute authentic accent. I had never noticed how different accents could lead to a poem being interpreted in different ways!

Their eagerness to learn was evident when I let them write their own acrostic poems. Nearly all of the children took out their English textbooks and flipped their pages to the glossary part, with all the words arranged in alphabetical order. They searched and tried to fit the words into their poems, then crossed them out again and searched on another page.

This reminded me of my younger self—searching for rhymes from every book I had, fitting words in, and reading them to see if they sounded weird. I had been embarrassed by my difficulty to find the right words, and believed that a real poet would have more ease with their verses.

Yet, seeing these children, I started to think that maybe this “awkward” method is the natural path of poetry writing, for poetry is about reining in one’s free-flowing thoughts by certain rules, and achieving the balance between form and the fluidity of ideas.

When the session was over, every one of them had written at least one poem, and they felt happy for what they have learned from the lesson. I equally learned a lot from this experience, which helped me see English poetry in a new light.