ON TIME - POETRY AND METAPHOR

11-14 group - 13 attending
15-18 group - 8 attending

This week, we were looking at how time is described and explored in poetry.

To begin, in the younger group, we played 'The Cogsworth Game', inspired by the character of Cogsworth from Beauty and the Beast - the butler who, with the rest of the Prince's servants, gets turned into an item of furniture (in his case, a clock) when the Prince is cursed by the enchantress.

To play the game, we looked at a series of images of different time-telling devices, from stopwatches to grandfather clocks, pocket watches to alarm clocks, cuckoo clocks to sundials, and each chose one to describe what it would be like if it was a human who had been turned into a clock, like Cogsworth! We thought about age, gender, name, behaviour, and appearance when writing our descriptions, and then shared in the chat for the rest of the group to guess the clock! Here are some examples...

From Erin – pocket watch

Eleanore Antoinette was part of the late French monarchy who
weren’t actually executed but turned into clocks. she has a cream dress with
glittering gold lacing. her brunette hair is piled on top of her head in a bun.

From Skye – pocket watch

she was a very bright person, quite loud too. She had a
sense of charming aroma that surrounded her like a posh perfume. No one dared
to hurt her, she was respected by everyone. The only issue is, no one had any
idea of where she came from. She just..appeared… in the school halls. Her
appearance? Odd. She was bound head to toe with gold. Necklaces, rings,
bracelets. Even her clothes looked like they were made from solid gold. I think
to myself everyday, "Maybe shes a runaway princess?"

From Sam - sundial

his name is the teller. he's clad in black and white robes,
with a trim of gold. his hair is woven on the right, and shaved on the left.
his robe has white on the left and black on the right. he has an oriental sun
on his left in black, and a moon on his right in white.

Next, we looked at the Emily Dickinson poem, 'Hope is the thing with feathers' and used this as a starting point for a poem about Time.

We thought about what Time would be if it was an animal, an insect, a plant, a place to live, a kind of weather, a colour, and a person. Then, the young writers chose one or more of these images/metaphors to start off their poems about time.

Here are some of the results...

The Dove – by Jake

White feathers like white snow
A royal oak taller than a plane
A island small but rich.
It’s the only place you can grant a wish
Five royal oak trees all taller than a plane.
Pigs and doves live on this island
Stranded not knowing what to do
We don’t know how they got there
People go to this island to grant there wish
All they ask for is money
Money doesn’t go far
So at the end of there asking for a wish
They only see black
People have now learnt these trees can’t grant every wish
The dove chooses that not the trees

By Erin:

His dark eyebrows would quiver.
His cheeks would lose their colour.
A stern gaze you’d be under.
The bags under his eyes have been there for centuries.
And the monocle he crafted
ever so gently.
Don’t get me wrong.
Time is a bore.
But please, dear reader, remember:
everyone has their sores.

By Sam Hunt:

wind in the morning,
calm in the afternoon,
snow in the evening,
lightning at night.

flowers in the morning,
trees in the afternoon,
fields in the evening,
locusts at night.

ticking in the morning,
clicking in the afternoon,
ticking in the evening,
tock in the night.

night in the morning,
evening in the afternoon,
afternoon in the evening,
mourning at night.

In the older group, we began by thinking about what Time would be as an animal, insect, plant, etc, inspired by 'Hope is the thing with feathers' before looking at some extracts about the importance of time in poetry from Glyn Maxwell's brilliant book 'On Poetry.'

We then looked at a wide range of poems about time for inspiration, looking at the metaphors/personification/images used to describe time in each, and how time seemed to be behaving - what sort of an animal, creature, person, force, plant, or element was Time? Did it seem kind, vindictive (great word from Lily!), cruel or gentle? How did the 'I' in the poem interact with Time? Did they fear it, were they fighting it or accepting it?

We looked at the villanelle 'If I could tell you' and 'As I walked out one evening', both by W.H. Auden, the opening lines of 'Burnt Norton' from T.S. Eliot's 'Four Quartets', the final stanza of 'Calmly We Walk Through This Autumn Day' by Delmore Schwartz, and 'On Time' by John Milton.

Inspired by these poems, the young writers wrote a brilliant range of poetic responses, using their metaphors for time in varied and exciting ways. Here are some examples...

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ON TIME - POETRY AND METAPHOR