21CC Literature Research Interest Group

Borne out of conversations on wanting to explore world literature in the classroom, three teachers in the research group and the NIE research team worked on designing and implementing a ten-week poetry unit launched in Term 3 of 2019, focusing on Asian poetry.

 

​The purpose of this unit was to:

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1. Introduce to students a variety of poetry from Asia in English/translated into English through dialogic points of convergence, conversation and conflict in theme and form;

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2. Present the reading of Asian poetry as a dynamic and open-ended process that embraces the cultural heterogeneity of both the writers, texts and the readers;

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3. Show how Asian poets engage with, invent and reinvent poetic forms;

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4. Help students recognize their perspectives and responses to a poem are largely embedded in their own cultural-historical context and their lived experiences; and

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5. Encourage an engagement with poetry from Asia that is situated in larger global networks of literature exchange.

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This unit culminated in an inter-school poetry writing project that saw students collaborate on digital platforms to co-write a poem featuring dialogic teachniques.