oral presentation on poetry

Getting Your ‘Wordsworth’: Poetry in Public Speaking

Anushka kala.

• Speech Writing

Expression is the heart and soul of good oration. To express is to impress, and thus, by using the powerful tool of poetry in public speaking, one will impactfully resonate with their audience.

To be able to inculcate poetry in one’s speech is both, an art, and a skill. Its effective use can elegantly sway public opinion by gently yet emphatically conveying one’s point across.

The benefits of using verse in speech are innumerable. These include the following:

The Power of Poetry in Public Speaking:

1. breaking the monotony:.

The fact of the matter is that the human mind is a wanderer—ever so restless. One can never get it to focus on a particular subject for a long period of time unless there’s a break in this monotony.

Poetry adds a fresher element to your speech by breaking the pre-existing flow and resulting in the addition of a newer dimension . This automatically captures and sustains your audience’s attention

2. Familiar-Unfamiliar:

The use of familiar poetic references , kindles familiar memories and associations thereby strengthening the connection between the spoken word and its listeners.

Whether it’s through schooling or reading for pleasure, we’ve all come across, gotten acquainted with, and perhaps even quoted some of history’s greatest poems.

By adding a familiar poem–be it a simple, ‘roses are red, violets are blue’ or an iconic ‘miles to go before I sleep’, a listener can delve into the subject matter even further and understand what the speaker is trying to convey, better.

3. Leaving Your Mark:

Poetry forms an effective arsenal in one’s presentation. It adds clarity, emphasis, and depth to the spoken word, thus creating an impactful performance.

Additionally, the use of such poetic devices results in the establishment of a strong influence that directly settles in the minds of the listeners.

Stay with us and scroll down below for our detailed explanation of the types and usage of poetic devices .

4. A ‘Fun’tastic Element:

Poetry can add an air of literary elegance through wit and tongue-in-cheek humour. This also adds a lot of class to one’s presentation.

Wit involves intelligently recognising, perceiving, and conveying ideas that result in hilarity and pleasure.

These definitely add to the element of surprise and are constantly used as methods to retain one’s audience’s attention.

Shakespeare was known to have loved his jokes. Take his sonnets, for instance, which are replete with dollops of wit, humour, and sarcasm:

You can read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 135 to experience this.

5. Fill in the Gaps:

“Even in a few lines, a poem outlines a perceptual world. A reader or listener fills in the gaps, adding another dimension.” Christine Stewart

In 2015, author, poet, essayist, and teacher, Christine Stewart delivered a stunning and resonating TED Talk which would definitely send a shiver down your spine.

She highlights how poetry can actually be used to create a new perspective as well as use the poem as a ‘springboard for reflection.’

 Here both, the listener, and the speaker delve into analysing and evaluating various perspectives to get a complete understanding of the subject.

Related Article: How to Harness the Power of Pausing in Public Speaking

 6. Succinct Presentation:

Poetry helps you in being concise.

It helps one ‘package’ one’s thoughts and material in a crisp, refined, and composed manner without it being too heavy for the listeners.

Thus, with poetry, you not only establish a deep connection with the imagination of your listeners but also present it succinctly, leaving a greater impact.

Though one may feel ‘poetically challenged’ as most of us aren’t erudite scholars, utilizing the power of verse isn’t as difficult when one tries to do parallels between one’s honest intent of speech and similar poetically expressed thoughts in published work. 

Here are a few pointers to help get the hang of this technique:

Procuring Poetic Prowess in Your Presentation:

1. reading between the lines:.

Thoroughly and accurately interpreting poetry is often considered to be a difficult task due to the very structure and nature of poetry.

This is because poetry involves the compression of heaps of information, depicted in just a few words, replete with metaphors and other literary devices , thus requiring a lot of attention to detail and prerequisite knowledge with respect to structure, form, devices, meters, rhythm, and language.

Before we recite the lines of any poem in our speech, we must understand the crux of the matter. What you see is not what you get, especially when it comes to poetry.

Every word so mentioned has to be broken down and analysed before incorporating it into your speech.

2. Practice, Practice, Practice! :

No skill in the world could ever be mastered without practice. The key to its effective and efficient delivery is that of confidence.

This confidence comes from practicing these lines several times, out loud. It is important to completely understand the musicality of the flow of the poem. This understanding builds with practice.

Understanding your material and delivering it correctly and confidently is what makes you an effective public speaker.

3. Read & Repeat :

The conveyance of a message in poetry relies heavily on the sequence of the words so chosen. 

Thus, a crucial aspect to keep in mind is being extremely well-versed with the poem you recite. Every character needs to be memorized and retained–including the commas, periods, and pauses. These are equally important.

It is also essential to memorize the rhythm and flow of the poem. This needs to be carefully understood and practiced. Thus, attention needs to be paid to all these aspects.

4. Go With Your Flow:

In poetry, the concept of rhythm, measures, and meters are highly prominent, as compared to say, a normal conversation.

This is because the emphasis is to be given to certain words to bring out the true emotions and expressions that one is trying to convey.

This is where stressed and unstressed syllables come to play. They form the backbone of the establishment of the poetic rhythm.

To further understand this concept, do check this out:

5. Modulate to Innovate:

Masterful public speakers are consummate actors. They are astute in controlling and harmonizing every quiver in their voice with their facial emotions.

Delivery of poetry is incomplete without modulation of your voice. Every tone and sound is to be planned and orchestrated, which comes from an in-depth understanding of the topic.

It is this technique that immediately attracts and captures the attention of the audience towards you and thus, needs to be honed well.

The tone of the poem depicts and reflects the attitude of the poet. Thus, this ultimately becomes make or break when it comes to determining if your content will be effective and impactful enough for your listeners.

Related Article: All You Need to Know About Voice Modulation & Tonality for Public Speaking

Understanding Poetry: Poetic Devices to Enhance Your Next Speech

Poetic devices form the core of any poem. They are tools that are employed in a poem to add meaning, emotion, structure, and rhythm to it.

These are the most crucial ingredients required for the recipe of a successful poem and add heaps of texture and flavour to it.

The more we study and identify poems, the better we’ll be able to understand and incorporate these poetic devices.

The usage of poetic devices lets you engage with your listeners, and ensure that they remain engrossed throughout your speech.

Examples of Poetic Devices used in Pop Culture:

Films, TV shows, and other categories of pop culture heavily rely on the employment of poetic devices to captivate their audiences.

For example, the rhetoric device of anadiplosis (repetition of the last word of a sentence as the beginning of the following one) is evident when legendary Jedi Master, Yoda (in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace [Episode I] , 1999) says:

“Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

You can also notice the use of alliteration ( repetition of same-sounding letters or words ) in ‘V For Vendetta’ (2005), one of my favourite movies of all time, written by The Wachowskis.

This celebrated monologue was delivered by the title character, V, as his introduction, portrayed by British actor, Hugo Weaving.

“Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi now vacant, vanished.

However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.

The only verdict is vengeance—a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.

Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V.”

What adds to the legacy of this movie is its unequalled writing, jam-packed with the use of poetic devices. This is how one employs these devices to put a spell on their audience.

Examples of Poetic Devices used in Speeches:

• Asyndeton deliberately excludes the usage of conjunctions in a sentence to emphasise on its meaning.

“…and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Abraham Lincoln

• Tricolon represents three words, clauses, or phrases placed adjacently.

“Be sincere, be brief, be seated.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt’s advice for public speakers

• A metaphor gives one the liberty to describe an object/ subject with another unrelated one; where no relationship exists between the two.

The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans. – John F. Kennedy

Here’s a list of some more commonly used poetic devices with examples:

1. Assonance :

This poetic device involves the continuous occurrence of the vowel sound to create an internal rhyme.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 55 :

Of princes , shall outlive this powerful rhyme;

But you shall shine more bright in these contents…

2. Imagery:

Involves a detailed description of subjects which paints a picture through our imagination.

William Wordsworth’s Daffodils {visual imagery}

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Rain in Summer {olfactory imagery}

They silently inhale

the clover-scented gale,

And the vapors that arise

From the well-watered and smoking soil

3. Onomatopoeia:

Onomatopoeia involves the structural derivation of a word from the sound it describes.

For example, the words Boom, Meow, Oink– all phonetically resemble the sound they describe.

Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Bells

Oh, the bells, bells, bells!

What a tale their terror tells

Of Despair!

How they clang, and clash, and roar!

What a horror they outpour

On the bosom of the palpitating air!

Yet the ear it fully knows,

By the twanging,

And the clanging,

How the danger ebbs and flows;

Yet the ear distinctly tells,

In the jangling,

And the wrangling.

4. Refrain:

Refrain refers to a single or a group of lines that are repeated throughout the course of the poem. 

Octavio Paz’s Wind, Water, Stone

Water hollows stone,

wind scatters water,

stone stops the wind.

Water, wind, stone.

Wind carves stone,

stone’s a cup of water,

water escapes and is wind.

Stone, wind, water.

5. Personification:

This poetic device adds character and life (human form) to otherwise, inanimate objects.

Sylvia Plath’s Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.

Whatever I see I swallow immediately

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.

I am not cruel, only truthful ‚

The eye of a little god, four-cornered.

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.

It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long

I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.

Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Thus, poetic devices can be used to add character to your next speech. Be mindful of using them appropriately in the correct context, so as to not confuse your listeners.

Most importantly, study and identify the poetic devices in your material so that you can coherently convey its meaning. These techniques will unquestionably charm your audience.

Introducing Poetry in Your Speech: Set the Tone, but Don’t Make it Known

The introduction is pivotal, especially in this scenario. Consider it as a make-or-break. The success of your poem depends on how grand its build-up has been.

An ideal introduction lays the background of the poem, without revealing its main message, which should be done so, gradually by the speaker.

Take it from us, this may seem simple in theory but is actually quite a task when actually executing. But, don’t worry, we have your back.

A good introduction comes from an excellent interpretation of the poem you’re introducing. Think of it as a secret you are to keep, which you slowly reveal as you get more acquainted and connected with your audience.

It’s a journey you’re taking them on, and a good introduction just ensures the fastening of their seatbelts; not the revelation of their destination.

Your approach depends on the subject and your audience. There’s no universal, sure-shot method of introducing your speech in a foolproof manner.

In fact, many speakers delve directly into their poems without an introduction and so, in some cases, no introductions serve as an introduction in itself .

Or, you can just stick to keeping it simple and unraveling complexities bit-by-bit, through your poem.

Your introduction isn’t the interpretation, but an invitation to experience innovation .

Keep this in mind, and you’re gold. It doesn’t matter what your approach is.

Related Article: 5 Ways to End Your Speech With Maximum Impact

Opening Poetry Lines That Will Help You Make A Lasting Impression

Related Article: 15 Powerful Speech Opening Lines & How to Create Your Own

We’ve heard this over and over again– The first impression is the last impression ; therefore, having a great opening line is an absolute necessity.

And what better way to do so, by starting strong and quoting lines from some of history’s greatest poems.

Here are some of my personal favourites:

1. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl:

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix”

2. Robert Herrick’s To The Virgins, to Make Most of Tim e:

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”

3. John Keats’ Endymion:

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”

4. Emily Dickinson’s Because I Could Not Stop For Death:

“Because I could not stop for Death—

He kindly stopped for me—”

5. T.S. Eliot’s  The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock:

“Let us go, then, you and I

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table.”

6. Alfred Noble’s The Highwayman :

“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone

Silence the pianos, and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.”

To help you understand the power of poetry even clearer, here are some of the greatest speeches in the world, delivered by revolutionaries who are remembered and celebrated majorly because of the resonating impact of their speeches.

Learning from the Greats:

1. dr. martin luther king jr..

Perhaps, one of the greatest and most legendary speeches of all time, “I Have A Dream” by Martin Luther King Jr. is a shining example of how poetry can bring about such an impact.

Delivered on the 28th of August, 1963, to end racism in the United States of America, “I Have A Dream” is in all probability, one of the most quoted speeches in the world, even today.

Take a look:

The most striking feature of this speech is the use of the poetic device of anaphora, which is the repetition of the same line at the beginning of a sentence.

The first 8 lines of this speech begin with “I Have A Dream”

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”

Related: Why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Speech Was Pure Poetry

2. Winston Churchill:

“We Shall Fight On The Beaches” by Britain’s then Prime Minister, Winston Churchill was delivered to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom on 4 June 1940.

Churchill too uses the poetic device of anaphora to create an impact. This is visible here:

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France,

We shall fight on the seas and oceans,

We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our

Island whatever the cost may be,

We shall fight on the beaches,

We shall fight on the landing grounds,

We shall fight in the fields and in the streets,

We shall fight in the hills;

We shall never surrender.

Notice the beginning of every line with “We Shall”

It is a known fact that Churchill was considered as a “poet in the guise of a politician” , which is precisely why his speeches serve as an ideal example of how poetry can add a different dimension to public speaking.

Related Article: Churchill’s Poetic Speeches of World War II

3. John F. Kennedy:

On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was elected as the 35th President of the United States of America, where he delivered his iconic inaugural speech, often quoted, even today.

The rhetorical device of chiasmus being used is the most striking feature when it comes to decoding this speech.

A chiasmus divides a sentence into two parts where the second phrase is a mirror image of the first one, meaning wise.

“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” is a prime example of this device. Both phrases mean the same but are placed in a manner, to put further emphasise on its meaning.

Final Thoughts

The beauty of poetry is something we’ve all witnessed, experienced, and felt, at least once in our lives. The unrestricted nature of poetry is what attracts us most to it. Thus, incorporating it in our speeches transforms our material into a different ball game altogether.

It takes practice, it takes effort. We must keep in mind that in a bid to win over one’s audience by using poetry, one may also end up losing them if this skill isn’t incorporated precisely and masterfully.

 In an attempt to sound more credible and well-read, one may resort to using ‘fancy’ words which may be beyond the understanding of the general public and/or poorly interpreted lines, which may result in one’s downfall–thus, being a double-edged sword.

Ultimately, when used correctly, adding poetry to your material will enhance it and create a wonderful impression. It gives you your words’ worth.

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Tips for Teaching Poetry

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In addition to participating in the Dear Poet project with students, here are a number of creative and inexpensive suggestions for bringing poetry into the classroom during April's National Poetry Month and throughout the year.  These tips were developed with the help of the Dodge Poetry Festival, the National Council of Teachers of English, and Teachers & Writers Collaborative.

Preparation

• Meet with other teachers and local poets to talk about how to teach poetry to young people.
• Talk with your school librarian about ordering books and creating a poetry book display.  Consider incorporating the latest National Poetry Month poster .
• Order a poetry anthology or other poetry books for your class.
• Attend poetry readings in your community .
• Contact your state arts council or your local literary center.
• Reread some favorite  poems .
• Post favorite poems in faculty and staff lounges.
• Write at least one poem before beginning a unit on poetry
• Begin each class with a poem by a different poet .
• Read a poem over the public address system each morning.
• Ask students to memorize poems and then recite them from memory.
• Read poems aloud to your students.
• Organize a student poetry reading at your local library or bookstore.
• Organize a Skype poetry reading where your students can interact with students from another part of the country or world.
• Organize a field trip to a local nursing home and have students read poems to the elderly.
• Ask each student to create his or her own anthology of favorite poems.
• Introduce a new  poetic form  each week and give examples of poems that use—or reinvent—the form.
• Publish student poetry in your school newspaper or magazine, or on your website.
• Publish a special anthology of student poems.
• Create a school poem and ask each student to contribute one line.
• Give students a list of words and ask them to create a poem using those words.
• Invite students to write poems in response to their favorite poems (or to news stories, songs, TV shows, or artworks).
• Encourage students to write in the voice of someone else—a parent, friend, or teacher.
• Have your students discuss several works by a specific poet by comparing and contrasting his/her poems.
• Hold poetry workshops where students discuss one another‘s work.
• Have your students write short poems, put them in balloons, and set them free.
• Have students write a poem in the style of a particular poet.
• Create and send poetry greeting cards to celebrate National Poetry Month.
• Challenge students to create a poetry notebook and write one poem per day for every day in April.

Other Activities

• Participate in National Poem in Your Pocket Day with your class.
• Film students reading their own poems or poems by others. Encourage them to share the recordings with parents and friends.
• Have students give an oral report on the poet of their choice while performing as the poet. Have the student recite some of the poet‘s work.
• Plan a field trip to a local poetry site (a poet‘s former home, gravesite, etc.)
• Invite local poets to your school for readings, workshops, or discussions, or ask poets from different parts of the country to talk to your class via Skype.
• Have your class vote on five poems to hand out in the cafeteria.
• Decorate the classroom or the school with illustrated poems and pictures of poets.
• Hold a poetry exchange day with poems wrapped as gifts.
• Encourage your local newspaper to sponsor a contest for student poets.
• Organize a poetry contest for teachers and administrators and select students to act as judges.

Success Stories from Past Years

The schools that had the greatest success during National Poetry Month were those in which individual teachers and librarians developed creative ways of making poetry a more important and visible part of daily life in school.

• Rye Country Day School (Rye, NY)—Inspired by Pinsky‘s Favorite Poem Project, students read aloud a favorite poem and explained its significance to them. These poems were compiled in an e-text archive. In the upper classes, students created elegies based on  The New York Times  obituaries. The fourth grade class performed “Poetry in Motion” memorizing and acting out poems. They created a poetry wall where their poems could be displayed. They also made a “living poetry anthology” posting famous poems in various locations throughout the halls. Students’ original works were gathered into a school anthology.
• Miss Hall‘s School (Pittheld, MA)—At morning meetings attended by the entire community, a different teacher opened with his/her favorite poem. Sophomores gathered poems to dedicate to a special person with personal comments about the poem directed to that person. The school sponsored a school-wide poetry contest of published poems to focus on the poetry and on oral presentation skills.
• (Charlotte, MI)—A residential treatment facility for juvenile offenders had a guest speaker read a favorite poem in the morning and at bedtime each day. Two residents read their own poetry at a County Board of Commissioners meeting. Residents published a book containing their poems. All guests to the facility received a copy. They held a poetry reading for members of the community and invited a local poet for a presentation and poetry workshop. Local businesses passed out poems written by residents to their customers. Customers were asked to give feedback via self-addressed stamped postcards. Placemats with residents’ poems were used at local restaurants.
• United Nations International School (New York, NY)—Poetry clubs meet for twenty minutes each week to discuss a chosen poem. After examining the Brueghel painting “Peasant Wedding” and reading William Carlos Williams’ poem of the same name, sixth through eighth graders studied a painting and wrote a poem about it. These were presented to the class and displayed on bulletin boards. A Poetry Café was held for the fifth grade classes. Parents decorated a classroom in the style of a French café and provided refreshments. Each student learned and recited a poem, in groups or individually. Seventh graders studied Lorde‘s “Hanging Fire” and wrote letters to the girl in the poem. Eighth graders discussed Carver‘s “In the Lobby of the Hotel Mayo” and wrote poems based on an event that changed their lives.
• The Gillispie School (La Jolla, LA)—A bulletin board of favorite poems from teachers decorated a classroom ceiling to floor. A Coco House Café allowed children to come in during recess and share poetry. This started two years ago during National Poetry Month and is now occurs every month. During National Poetry Month it is held every week. Students went around the community and gave out business cards with poems typed on them.
• A.D. Healey School (Somerville, MA)—Students memorize a poem a month. On “Poetry Night” a classroom is converted into a coffee house setting and students recite the poems, staged with scenery. They do a dress rehearsal for upper grades and a performance in the evening for parents and other non-students.
• (Lincoln, RI)--Students brought in songs to relate to poetry themes. They posted original and favorite poems in areas where students congregate. Students composed original poetry from artwork and photographs from shared themes.
• Centennial School (Utica, NE)—Local poets shared poetry with the kindergarten, third and fourth grade classes. They handed out bookmarks with poetry printed on them and had the children create poetry using a “name game."
• (Portland, Oregon)—Poems were posted in faculty restroom stalls for the fifth year. A “poetry supermarket” in class had students choose a “product” they like, read it to the class, and respond in writing to its special elements.
• Valencia Community College (Kissimmee, FL)—An Evening With the Poets allowed students to share their original poetry. Faculty members read their favorite poems and explained their choice.
• St. Marks Episcopal School (Houston, TX)—Students in a sixth grade class each chose a poet and memorized one to three poems to recite to the class. Then they chose another poem to “teach” to the class using theme or content, structural literary devices, or forms as a basis. They wrote original odes, couplets, or free verse poems which were compiled into their own poetry book containing ten original poems.
• (Reidsville, NC)—At 11:00 all high school classes stopped to write poetry. Ideas for methods were supplied. Every student‘s poem was posted in the halls.
• (Mill Valley, CA)—Classes in a high school viewed portions of Bill Moyers' The Language of Life videos. Students helped their teacher post poetry all over the school, in lockers and in faculty mailboxes. Open poetry readings were held once a week during lunch. The library created a poetry display “window” in the hallway. Freshman wrote poems and designed a PowerPoint slide show around them with animated type and artwork.

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In the Poet's Shoes: Performing Poetry and Building Meaning

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Through the use of dramatic reading and the exploration of Internet resources, sixth through eighth grade students build a greater understanding of poetry and the poet's voice. Further, the experience requires students to analyze and develop their own interpretation of a poem's meaning and representation through performance. Extension activities involve students giving an oral poetry performance of their own poetry.

From Theory to Practice

• Drama is a useful tool in developing affect in readers; it creates interest and motivation.
• Drama provides the opportunity for students to develop fluency through the repeated reading of a text selected for performance.
• Through drama, students develop a deeper understanding of text because it requires them to determine emphasis and interpretation.

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
• 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
• 4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
• 9. Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles.
• 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

Materials and Technology

Poetry Out Loud by Robert A. Rubin. (Algonquin Books, 1996)

• Preparing for Your Performance handout
• Thinking About Poetry Notes handout
• Thinking About Poetry handout

Preparation

Student objectives.

Students will

• Analyze a variety of poems from a variety of online resources
• Compare the concrete similarities and differences of several poems
• Build connections between personal experience and literature
• Analyze the elements a poet uses to develop meaning
• Explore and develop an understanding of audience, speaker, narrator, and writer
• Analyze mood and theme
• Explore the impact spoken language has on meaning
• Use dramatic voice and expression
• Evaluate their own performance and the performance of others based on a specific evaluation rubric

Instruction & Activities

• Students choose one vocabulary word and illustrate it to show its meaning.
• Students write and perform their own poems for the class.
• Students illustrate lines in a poem to visualize meaning or particular images used in the poem.
• Choose selections from Poetry Out Loud to read by stanza in a call-and-response manner. Begin by reading one stanza and having a student respond by reading the next stanza. Continue going back and forth between stanzas. Then, have students write their own poems that can be read in a call-and-response manner.

Student Assessment / Reflections

• Teacher assessment for this lesson will take the form of two evaluation rubrics:

1.  In the Poet's Shoes Research and Class Participation Rubric 2.  In the Poet's Shoes Poetry Presentation Rubric

• Use a separate evaluation rubric and an essay response for student's self-assessment. Self-assessment should focus on student's understanding of the poem, his or her interpretation of its meaning, and an evaluation of the performance.
• Calendar Activities
• Lesson Plans

Students often find poetry frustrating and meaningless. By helping students think critically about the differences between poetry and prose, this introduction sets the stage for different strategies for comprehending poetic texts.

Students will be motivated to share their poetry through an online tool the features recording and animation.

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Elevate Your Presentation Skills: Unleashing the Power of Poetry

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Timing is crucial in effective communication. Poetry sharpens your sense of timing by emphasizing the rhythm and cadence of language. Through regular practice of reading poetry aloud, you’ll develop a keen sense of timing, knowing when to pause, when to emphasize, and when to transition seamlessly between ideas. Additionally, poetry expands your vocal range, teaching you to modulate your voice to convey different emotions and capture the attention of your listeners. These skills enable you to deliver impactful presentations that resonate with your audience.

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Creativity and Performance in Oral Poetry

• First Online: 03 March 2021

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• Godini G. Darah 3  

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This chapter examines the interplay of composition and performance in some oral poetry traditions of Africa. The oral methods of composition and performance are the kernel of oral literature discourse; the methods distinguish oral texts from written ones. About a dozen African traditions are described. The data are sourced from published studies by experts on the traditions. The competitive song contests of the udje of the Urhobo, the ijala of the Yoruba, and song exchanges among the Tiv, all of Nigeria, and the Dinka of South Sudan illustrate the features of premeditated texts, memorization, festival performance, and creative improvisation during delivery. Creative improvisation and resort to formulaic resources are aesthetic demands in the oral epic presentation. Oral epics and heroic verses exemplify the creative value of the formulaic idiom. The composition-performance dialectic is richly illustrated by techniques employed by the bards of Sunjata epic of the Mandinka of Guinea, the Ozidi Saga of the Ijaw, as well as the Ohafia-Igbo singers of tales in Nigeria. Audience participation stimulates creativity and dexterous delivery; each performance recreates texts and contexts. The izibongo heroic poetry of the Xhosa and the Zulu of South Africa furnishes good material to test the changes that composed texts undergo under the pressure of delivery. Oral poetry and music merge into aesthetic experience during performance. The musical practices of the Bala of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Hausa of northern Nigeria, and the Akan of Ghana demonstrate this generic fusion. New media of communication now enable artists to be more resourceful. The career of popular musicians in South Africa points to the limitless opportunities for creativity and performance. Multi-media resources of poetry, music, dance, radio, television, and various social media platforms empower the African oral poet to create and perform for global audiences. The survey shows that studies on composition and performance should be given priority attention in oral literature curricula.

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Darah, G.G. (2021). Creativity and Performance in Oral Poetry. In: Akinyemi, A., Falola, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Oral Traditions and Folklore. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55517-7_1

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How to Read an Oral Poem

Gabriel bodard , king's college, london. [email protected].

[This book is enhanced by and should be read with reference to a website which contains supplementary materials including annotated and updated bibliography; photographs, audio and video files of oral poets in action.]

This carefully constructed book ( HROP ) begins with a disclaimer: Foley (F.) opens by explaining that he aims in this volume to make oral poetry accessible particularly to the non-specialist reader, and states without apology that ‘if in championing the cause of the non-specialist this book errs on the side of simplicity and availability, then so be it’ (xi). This review should also begin with a warning: this book is not primarily a classics book (references to Homeric poetry appear, but they are overshadowed by other examples 1 ) and is written for the non-specialist; this review will attempt to show its interest for a classical audience. The issues this review will address include the accessibility and successful communication of the issues involved in the reading of oral poetry to a non-expert audience, for instance how useful this book might be to a classics undergraduate reading Homer. I shall not address the validity of F.’s theories of oral poetics in detail, except where they affect his presentation of the material in this book, since the theoretical discussions are to be found in his works elsewhere and are fully referenced and cited throughout. 2

As part of this strategy to reach the non-specialist reader, F. employs a slightly simplified series of models to introduce the study of oral poetry. The multiplicity of forms of oral poetry are classified into four genres or subclasses of orality: oral performance; voiced texts; voices from the past; written oral poems. Three particular methodological approaches are expounded: performance theory, ethnopoetics, and immanent art. Finally, a set of ten *proverbs* are set out to encapsulate the principles demonstrated throughout HROP (the asterisks are there to indicate that these are invented, not traditional proverbs). 3 These three schemata are invoked throughout the work.

The agenda of this book is principally paedagogical, and it opens with a chapter containing four scenarios with disparate examples of oral poets, including the surprising Tibetan ‘paper-singer’, the modern American ‘slam poet’, and the ancient Greek bard. This chapter both stresses the plurality of genres and contexts that make up the collective that we call ‘Oral Poetry’ and, perhaps more importantly, actively confounds the reader’s expectations, as any good teacher of anthropology should strive to do.

The second chapter ‘What the Oral Poets Say (in Their Own “Words”)’ reports on conversations with three Yugoslavian oral poets who consistently define a ‘word’ ( rec ) in poetry as a larger unit than the modern lexical word. This ‘word’ (in quotation marks throughout) is what a classicist might call a formulaic unit, or a byte of poetic meaning, ranging from half a line to a whole episode in a story. These ‘words’, F. stresses, often have meanings larger or different from the simple meaning of their constituent words and need to be understood on a different level to fully appreciate the poetry. This concept will be crucial in the section on immanent art, below, and is central to about half of the ten *proverbs*.

The next eight chapters are titled the first through eighth ‘words’, in keeping with the usage just described. In the ‘First Word: What is Oral Poetry?’, F. sets out to define the terms of the title of the book, asking four questions: what is oral poetry? What is an oral poem? What do we mean by how ? (The first of these is addressed in this section, the next two in the next, the fourth not until the third ‘word’). The question ‘what is oral poetry?’ is answered by deconstructing or ‘opening up’ four sets of modern, western assumptions about poetry: (1) the poetic line, including the expectation that poetry will have regular line structure, metre, syllable counts, and other features; (2) the poetic genre, the most important point being that not all oral poetry is epic, that there are a multiplicity of forms, genres, and ethnicities of oral poetry; (3) the ‘oral versus written dichotomy’, again showing that there is a great deal of complexity and variety in the ways of speaking, composing, and writing poetry in cultures around the world; (4) media dynamics, where F. introduces the four types into which oral poetry can be classified: oral performance, voiced texts, voices from the past, and written oral poems. Each of these is illustrated with a representative example of an oral (or not so oral) poetic form. Once again, this chapter helps to break down the expectations and preconceptions of the reader/student in preparation for exploring oral poetics.

The second word, ‘Contexts and Reading’, addresses the second and third questions relating to the title of the book. ‘What is an oral poem ?’ turns out to be a different question from the previous ‘what is oral poetry?’, although the answer yet again is that given the vast plurality of oral poetry, the question ‘what is an oral poem?’ can only be answered in individual cases with attention to cultural and poetic context. In answer to the third question, ‘what is reading?’, F. demonstrates that reading is also a complex, culture- and context-specific concept. A key term in this argument which will be revisited throughout the book is sêmata ( σήματα ), the deadly symbols from Bellerophon’s tablet in the Iliad , which is how writing is described in non-literate terms (77).

The next three chapters together begin to answer the final question in the title: ‘what do we mean by how ?’, introducing the three methodological approaches to oral poetry which this book exemplifies. The third word, which demonstrates the use of performance theory, is subtitled ‘Being there’. Performance theory is treated elsewhere in F.’s work; 4 here he demonstrates the importance of performance in the appreciation of oral poetry, giving examples from Yugoslavian singers. A useful list and explanation of ‘keys to performance’, including figurative language, special formulas, and appeals to tradition, demonstrates further the importance of understanding the context and genre of any form of oral poetry to appreciate the message of the poem.

The fourth word, ‘Verbal Art on its Own Terms’, introduces some of the strategies and methods employed by ethnopoetics. Like performance theory, ethnopoetics puts emphasis on cultural, generic, and performance contexts of oral poetry. 5 F. gives two examples of the technique of ‘scoring’, a method of transcribing a poetic performance that records features of the poem other than the simply verbal features recorded in a traditional printed text. A performance of modern American ‘slam poetry’ is scored to indicate features such as volume, pitch, speed, gestures, and stage directions, bringing a reader much closer to the experience of the original audience. The opening lines of the Old English poem Beowulf are transcribed (translated) so as to ‘reinstitute some of the major units and patterns found in the original Old English as a guide to becoming a more fluent audience for the poem’ (104). Indicated features include metre, scene types, structure, and so forth; there are cues in the oral poem that flag certain scene types, cues that need to be recognised and translated for a non-native reader or audience. The section describing this strategy would be of particular interest to Homerists, whose texts are likewise ‘voices from the past’ like Beowulf .

Perhaps the most interesting of the three methodological approaches is the third, immanent art, discussed in the fifth word, ‘Traditional Implications’. Immanent art is a more sophisticated version of the Parry-Lord ‘oral-formulaic theory’, which has had so great an impact on Homer studies in the last century. Rather than simply identifying formulae (‘words’) as the building blocks of oral poetry, selected and slotted together purely for mnemonic or metrical convenience, immanent art sees these ‘words’ as linguistic units in the complex language of oral poetry, idiomatic rather than arbitrary bytes. 6 The larger language in which any given type of oral poetry is composed needs to be learned in order to read the poetry properly. This chapter is perhaps best summarised by three of F.’s *proverbs*: (1) oral poetry works like language, only more so; (4) the art of oral poetry emerges through rather than in spite of its special language; (5) the best companion for reading oral poetry is an un written dictionary. This dictionary would contain and define ‘words’, not words.

Having introduced these three methodological approaches to oral poetry succinctly, memorably, and effectively, F. goes on in the sixth word to present his list of ten newly invented, *proverbs*, each explained in detail and demonstrated with diverse examples. We have given examples of these proverbs above, and between them they typify most if not all of the important points made in this book: plurality of kinds of oral poetry, the three approaches, the importance of context, performance, and special language. In a university course on oral culture or poetics, these ten *proverbs* would probably make a useful almanac to be rote-learned by students, although I should not be able to spend so much time on them in a general unit on Homer.

The seventh word, ‘Reading Some Oral Poems’, presents a series of case studies exemplifying F.’s four categories of oral poetry and three methodologies. These expositions are demonstrative examples, F. is at pains to make clear that he does not intend the chapter to be a comprehensive or even representative sampling of oral poetry. Among his examples are a slam poetry gig at a New York café in 2001, some formulaic story-types from the Odyssey , and the Chanson de Roland . This chapter drives home many of the points made previously in the book, but more importantly it whets the reader’s/student’s appetite for more oral poetry.

From a chapter containing a scattering of diverse and varied examples of oral poetry from many different continents and centuries, F. turns next to a much more detailed analysis of the oral poetry of a single region: the former Yugoslavia. The eighth word, ‘An Ecology of South Slavic Oral Poetry’, may be of particular interest to Homerists, who are usually introduced to oral poetics via Parry and Lord’s work with Yugoslav guslars . In an attempt to be more comprehensive in his study of the poetry of this region (which is not a monolithic genre by any means), F. does not focus only on epic poetry, but surveys the ‘lesser’ genres of magic healing charms and funerary laments (both female genres), and genealogies (male), before turning to discussion of Serbian (Christian) epic, and finally the Moslem epic that was the focus of Parry and Lord’s work. In a final, fascinating digression, F. demonstrates that oral poets do not only compose their epics or charms in their special, formulaic language, but can also speak in this poetic form, using words that do not exist in the traditional epic register within which they usually work. This anecdotal evidence is a further demonstration of F.’s first *proverb*: oral poetry works like language, only more so.

At the end of this book is a short post-script on electronic media. F. points out that before the advent of writing, that is to say for 94% of human history, all language was oral (pre-script). For the past five thousand years or so we have been a ‘para-script’ species, where oral language and text work side-by-side in many cultures. For the last five years or so, since the advent of the internet, we are starting to become what might be called a ‘post-script’ culture. This argument is not fully developed here, and to be fair it would take a book at least the size of this one to address it properly. More important though, in my view, is F.’s point that the electronic media of the internet can enable us to create more useful and authentic editions of oral poems. Multimedia and interactive features of the computer can foreground many of the aspects that performance theory and ethnopoetics try to highlight; the use of hyperlinks and split windows on the internet can be used to provide glosses and perhaps even start writing the ‘ un written dictionary’ of immanent art. This book, and its sibling website, begin to take advantage of these features already; there is, of course, so much more that can be done.

In summary, I believe HROP will be overwhelmingly successful in its stated aim to introduce the reading and study of oral poetry to the non-specialist. Any Homerist or scholar of classical poetry who is not familiar with F.’s fine work on this topic will find this book extremely valuable; any educator who attempts to introduce the issues and special languages of oral poetry to students at any level will find much essential paedagogical material between its covers.

Finally a brief comment on a very rare erratum in this attractively produced work: on page 170 Circe is twice named in a context that clearly should refer to Calypso. When I consulted the website for this book, there seemed to be a problem downloading the QuickTime version of a video file showing a performance by a slam poet; I reported this problem to the author via the email link on the home page, and it was fixed within a couple of days. The website, being a more dynamic medium, will certainly improve and grow as time passes.

1 . Of particular interest to Homerists may be discussions at pp. 8-10, 74-7, 166-71.

2 . Cf. esp. The Theory of Oral Composition (1988), The Singer of Tales in Performance (1995), Teaching Oral Traditions (ed. 1998), Homer’s Traditional Art (1999). Fuller bibliography of F.’s work appears in HROP (231) and on the annotated website cited above.

3 . Four classes of oral poetry: 39 (and 40-53); three methods: third through fifth ‘words’ and passim; ten *proverbs*: sixth ‘word’, reviewed and summarised 184-5.

4 . E.g. ‘Folk literature’ (1995) in ed. Greetham, Scholarly Editing: A guide to research , 600-626; cf. Bauman, Verbal Art as Performance (1977), & Story, Performance, and Event (1986).

5 . F. discusses ethnopoetics further in The Singer of Tales in Performance (1995); cf. n. 4, above.

6 . Cf. Foley, Immanent Art: From structure to meaning in traditional oral epic (1991).

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Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance and Social Context . Ruth Finnegan

1978, American Anthropologist

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Tiziana La Melia

Franco Fanelli

In this paper I explored three aspects of oral discourse: prosody, oral language and memory, poetic function. Looking to the role of prosody in oral discourse, I pointed out that the intonation shows in a very clear way the supremacy of semantics over grammar and that oral language is essentially a phonic-acoustic technology that we use to share our social experience. A proper valuation of its sound and musical implications is basic to understand how oral discourse becomes a meaning maker and a knowledge agent. Then I addressed the relation between oral language and memory and I illustrated the phonic-acoustic facilities and the mnemotechnical media used by oral cultures to help the transmission of their knowledge. Finally I examined the dynamics of orality in Western culture following the fundamental analysis by Eric Havelock, scholar of classical age, on oral tradition and on Greek poetry. Discussing his observations I found an unexpected substantial parallelism concerning the poetic function between his historical vision and theoretical vision of the famous linguist Roman Jakobson. In the first half of sixties both have dealt with relation between poetry and poetic function. And both explained that poetic procedure, as distinguished from poetry, is a technology of oral language by means of which oral cultures realize mnemonic tools to pass on their tradition. The two scholars, independent of each other, discussed this topic in conceptually close terms and they went so far as to adopt very similar definitions of the phenomenon although inspired by distinctly separated paradigms.

Christopher Nealon

Anthony K. Webster

Abstract. In this article, I think through questions of craft and inspiration in the creation of poetry. My interests are in the ways that languages, individuals, and cultures are intertwined. I take an ethnographic perspective on the question and a comparative approach as well. I juxtapose my work with Navajo poets with work on Afghan poets, Yemeni cassette poets, Israeli poetry workshops, and Bergamasco poets. I attend, where possible, to the views of specific poets on the relationship between craft and inspiration. With Navajo poets, I try and provide enough background to place their views in a context of a Navajo framework of meaning and moral responsibility. The goal is to begin to understand the creating of poetry as social practice. The conclusion places this work within a broader concern of a humanities of speaking approach. Résumé. Cet article s’appuie sur les notions de « métier » et d’inspiration dans la création poétique et s’intéresse à la façon dont langues, individus et cultures interfèrent. L’auteur associe une perspective ethnographique à une approche comparative. Ses travaux sur les poètes Navajo sont juxtaposés à des études sur des poètes afghans, yéménites (qui composent pour être enregistrés sur cassettes), les ateliers poétiques israéliens, et les poètes bergamasques. Autant que possible, il examine les vues de poètes spécifiques sur la relation entre travail de composition et inspiration. Pour les poètes navajos, il restitue dans une certaine mesure l’arrière-plan anthropologique pour replacer leurs vues dans le contexte des conceptions locales sur le sens et la responsabilité. Le but est de tenter de comprendre la création poétique comme une pratique sociale. La conclusion ouvre sur une perspective plus large liée aux humanités langagières. Keywords: Poetry, Navajo, Creativity, Verbal life, Inspiration, Craft, Ambiguity, Humanities of Speaking Mots-clefs : poésie, Navajos, créativité, vie du langage, inspiration, métier, ambiguïté, humanités langagières.

Jason M. Silverman

Marcin Kowalski

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Developing Oral Language and Vocabulary through Poetry

Meredyth Kazar

Lesson introduction.

In this unit I have noted variations for students in grades three to grade seven. There are many ways you can begin but here is an example that has worked with my class. You will find a list of resources I have used for ideas about slam poetry, eg: Sara Holbrook and poems by Larry Swartz, Sheree Fitch, Ralph Fletcher, Georgia Heard and Nancy Atwell.

Start the unit by bringing in poetry books and other poetry resources. Let kids to pick poems that they like. Ask class what they know about poetry and start a chart that can be left up in the classroom. Choose a favourite book of poetry, for example, Sheree Fitch's Toes in My Nose. Photocopy each poem in the book. Read a poem and see who wants it and give it away. Students are expected to practice the poem and share it with the class. They need to figure out how they are going to do this. Ideas are shared and props can be made. With your class, decide the criteria for judging performance. Sometimes you may allow a couple of kids to perform a couple of poems together.  Some groups are ready to perform immediately. Others need lots of encouragement and practice.

For older students I have other anthologies that I like to use. I often use fun poems, such as these, even with older kids. This idea came initially because Sheree was going to visit my class and I wanted the class to be familiar with her work and give her a gift as well. I had a very creative class so it was amazing morning.  

Learning Objectives

In this lesson, students will have opportunities to:

• Understand elements of poetry, e.g. rhythm, rhyme, metaphor, similes, alliteration, assonance, word choice.
• Become comfortable with oral presentations and learn strategies of how to effectively presents.
• Enjoy reading and writing poetry.
• Improve and be more specific in their choices and use of words in prose writing.
• Students will improve oral fluency, a key element in reading comprehension.

Materials and Resources

To teach this lesson, you will need:

• paper, pencils
• poetry Anthology: Toes in My Nose and Other Poems by Sheree Fitch
• Guess Who My Favourite Person is by Byrd Baylor
• selection of Poetry Anthologies for children. One old favourite of mine is The Random House Book of Poetry for Children edited by Jack Prelutsky.  

Suggested Teacher Resources On Performance:

• Wham! It's a Poetry Jam by Sara Holbrook
• Outspoken! How to Improve Writing and Speaking Skills Through Poetry Performance by Sara Holbrook and Michael Salinger
• The Second City Guide to Improv in the Classroom by Katherine McKnight and Mary Scruggs

On Writing and Appreciating Poetry:

Poetry Matters by Ralph Fletcher (Harper Collins) written for children, I think it is a great resource for teachers.

• The Poetry Experience by Sheree Fitch and Larry Schwartz
• Poetry Starting from Scratch by Michael Carey 

Three double periods (80 minutes)

Additional poems.

Poetry Anthology: Toes in My Nose and Other Poems by Sheree Fitch and illustrated by Sydney Smith (Nimbus Publishing, 2016)  

Guess Who My Favourite Person is by Byrd Baylor (Aladdin Paperbacks,1992)

The Random House Book of Poetry for Children edited by Jack Prelutsky.  

Wham! It's a Poetry Jam by Sara Holbrook (Word Song, Boyd Mills Press) 

Outspoken! How to Improve Writing and Speaking Skills Through Poetry Performance by Sara Holbrook and Michael Salinger (Heinemann)

The Second City Guide to Improv in the Classroom by Katherine McKnight and Mary Scruggs 

The Poetry Experience by Sheree Fitch and Larry Schwartz (Pembroke) is a handy book with lots of ideas

Poetry Starting from Scratch by Michael Carey (Foundation Books)

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Six Simple Suggestions for Poetic Presentations

Poetic presentations.

Presentations are pervasive, perhaps unavoidable, in modern business culture. We depend upon them to document details and dictate discussion. We use them to inform and to teach.

But shouldn’t presentations also inspire? Can they be evocative as well as informational?

I believe they can, and I think a lot about the qualities that make presentations feel poetic rather than pedestrian.

Poetic Building Blocks

I’ll spare you the cliche of starting with the dictionary definition (see #2 below), but most descriptions touch on these essential components of poetry: the expression of feelings and ideas, distinctive style, rhythm, beauty, intensity of emotion, and brevity.

1. Expression

To me, the most important element of a poetic presentation is a single, powerful idea to build around, to expand upon, to infuse every aspect of your creation. Think of this as your creative hook or your angle. Without a strong underlying inspiration or theme, presentations can end up feeling rambling, jumbled, or disjointed — just a sequence of slides.

The Dragonfly Effect , an inspiring book and blog about how social media can drive social change, is a great example of how powerful a cohesive creative hook can be. I incorporated beautiful dragonfly imagery into this presentation I made to share the team’s unique approach.

Poetry in Practice : When you’re crafting a presentation, give yourself some time up front to identify a theme you can carry through. This could be a metaphorical idea, a powerful phrase, or some other unifying creative thread. I often get my ideas from exploring in the Haiku Deck image search .

2. Distinctive Style

There are a wide variety of unique poetic forms, each with its own mood, character, and general format. The same is true for presentations. Whether you are sharing a lighthearted list or making an impassioned case for a cause you care about, select a style that fits and carry it through cohesively. Each presentation you create should feel distinct, in a way that suits its unique purpose.

The other important point here is to be distinctive — which means taking special care to avoid cliche in subject matter, wording, and image choice.

I love how Mel Carson uses black & white portraits in this presentation promoting his book, Pioneers of Digital . The overall effect feels unified and perfectly tailored to its subject.

Poetry in Practice : Instead of templatizing your presentations, select fonts and images to reinforce your mood and theme. As you develop each presentation, keep formatting and even image palettes as cohesive as possible to sustain the mood.

Poetry is strongly associated with rhythm, with cadence, with well-chosen words. You can play with alliteration (the repetition of consonants), assonance (the repetition of vowel sounds), or even rhyme as you title your talk and script your slides.

Zooming out, try to give your presentation as a whole a sense of rhythm, structure, and flow. You can do this by repeating visual or text elements at regular intervals — for example, solid-color slides to introduce new sections, or a short, simple string of text repeated throughout for poetic emphasis.

“Sculpting an Elephant,” by Barry Casey, is a wonderful example of poetic language and rhythmic flow in practice:

Poetry in Practice : Allow yourself time, and a few edit passes, to explore possibilities for word choice — you might even use an online dictionary, thesaurus, or rhyming dictionary for ideas. If you land on a poetic, powerful phrase, try repeating it at intervals throughout your presentation to underscore its rhythmic resonance.

Beauty alone can’t carry an unsubstantial idea, but a beautifully presented idea can blossom into something bigger, more powerful. In a presentation, beauty may take the form of evocative, well-chosen images that deepen your meaning, or it could be an elegant metaphorical idea that intrigues and illuminates.

Take a look at how Brandon George uses clever images with a playful spin in this information-sharing presentation, “How to Get Ideas.” It’s a very creative take on beauty!

Poetry in Practice : Use high-quality imagery, and don’t rush the selection of your images — they should be more than just decoration. Be sure each image you choose deepens and extends your meaning or tells a story.

In the age of big data, it’s common to value information over emotion, and to structure presentations accordingly. Yet in the words of Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal , “Humans simply aren’t moved to action by ‘data dumps,’ dense PowerPoint slides, or spreadsheets packed with figures. People are moved by emotion.”

“Humans simply aren’t moved to action by ‘data dumps,’ dense PowerPoint slides, or spreadsheets packed with figures. People are moved by emotion.” — Jonathan Gottschall

When we celebrated our company’s one-year anniversary last summer, I wanted to acknowledge the milestone with a mix of compelling stats and stories. Here’s how I wove the two together:

For another example, check out how a creative teacher infuses a basic scientific formula with storytelling in this educational presentation:

Poetry in Practice: No matter how data-heavy your presentation is, your message will be more memorable if you can turn your stats in stories. Emotion and information can work together to elevate your key points.

Certainly there are grand, epic forms of poetry, but most poetic forms favor brevity. Keeping your presentation concise and focused will nearly always make it feel more poetic.

This personality-packed presentation, created to cap off what was surely an epic Startup Weekend event, is an excellent example of how little text you actually need to get the point across.

Poetry in Practice: Instead of trying to pack in more — more words, more ideas, more thoughts, more data points — see what you can remove. Give your ideas some breathing room, so they can bloom.

Here’s one last example I’d like to share, in which I tried to incorporate all of these poetic building blocks to some extent. I created it for presentation expert Nolan Haims, based on a blog post he wrote that inspired me . (Sending this to him felt a bit like cooking dinner for a famous chef, and I offered to make any changes he requested, but he liked it !)

There’s no foolproof formula to creating poetic presentations — like poetry itself, there are plenty of forms to explore and ways to experiment. But I hope these poetic building blocks can plant some seeds for future presentation inspiration.

Do you have favorite examples or poetic presentations, or ideas to share? Let me know in the comments!

And if you appreciate what we’re doing, please cast your vote for poetic presentations in the Webby Awards — every vote makes a big difference!

Categories: inspiration

Tags: creativity , inspiration , presentation pointers , tips

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Celebrating Health Profession Students' Poetry, Prose, and Visual Arts

Program for Humanities in Medicine 2024 Health Professions Creative Writing and Art Contest Awards Ceremony

Lenique Huggins - First place in Art category

Created by MD student Hang Nguyen. Second place in Art category

WInston Trope - Honorable Mention in Art category

Zeynep Inanoglu - Honorable Mention in Art category

2024 PHM Health Professions Creative Writing and Art Contest Award Ceremony - Student Winners

Winning artwork

Black Motherhood in Medicine

Created by MD student Lenique Huggins. First place in Art category

These Small Things

These are the titles of the poetry, prose, and visual artworks that received first-place in the annual Yale School of Medicine (YSM) Program for Humanities in Medicine (PHM) Health Professions Students' Creative Writing & Art Contest. On May 2, the student winners were celebrated at a gathering where they shared and often provided context for their creations. A supportive and appreciative audience applauded enthusiastically after each presentation.

Professor and PHM Director Anna Reisman, MD, welcomed everyone to the celebration, sharing that the contest began more than two decades ago. It originally was a poetry and prose contest just for medical students; the family of Marguerite Rush Lerner, MD, established and endowed the contest to honor her. Lerner was a dermatologist at YSM, as well as a children’s book author. (Lerner’s husband, Aaron Lerner, MD, PhD, was the first chair of Yale’s Department of Dermatology, and two of their four sons, Ethan Lerner, MD, PhD ‘82 and Michael Lerner, MD ’81, attended YSM.) Reisman explained that several years ago the contest expanded to include visual arts, and also students from across the health profession schools and programs—MD, MD-PhD, Physician Associate, Physician Assistant Online, Nursing, and Public Health.

This year, almost 100 students participated in the contest. MD student winners receive the Marguerite Rush-Lerner prize; the other Yale health professions students receive the Program for Humanities in Medicine prize. See the list of winners under "Related Links."

While second-year MD student Lenique Huggins had been thinking about creating Black Motherhood in Medicine for a few months, it only took two evenings to do so, once she began.

She explains that the inspiration for the piece started in her first week of medical school, when she learned that the maternal mortality rate for Black mothers is 2.6 more than non-Hispanic white mothers. “As a young Black woman, this statistic especially pained me and my close friends.” Additionally, she says that in classes throughout the year, she was part of formal and informal discussions about being a mother in medicine. “I heard from classmates across racial backgrounds about their real fears of balancing pregnancy with their medical training and pregnancy complications among medical professionals.” That led her to begin to think about “my intersection as a future Black mother in medicine and the challenges I may face because of these identities. Now, as a second-year student, I created a piece that captures something I have thought much about these past two years.”

Huggins grew up in a Caribbean household close to art and culture from all over the world. “I’ve always been surrounded by music, dance, storytelling, and visual art, and my family hosted international students throughout my childhood. I started playing the piano at age three, and have been singing, dancing, and doodling for as long as I can remember.” However, it was not until she was an undergraduate at Duke University and participated in community service that she “began to understand the therapeutic value of art.”

Through her involvement in different programs at that time, including Families Moving Forward, a shelter for families without homes, and Reflections, a weekly art program for adults with dementia at Duke Nasher Museum, Huggins says, “I saw how encouraging self-expression could bring peace during uncertain times, reduce stress, and empower communities. When I went through a rough time in my sophomore year, I found myself using painting for a lot of healing.”

Huggins continues, “I will continue practicing art. It’s a self-care practice that helps me combat burnout and show up better for patients who need me.”

Class of 2025 MD student Hang Nguyen started painting at age 11, when her family immigrated to America from Vietnam. She explains, “I did not speak English at the time, so art was a vessel through which I could communicate my tumultuous adolescent mind.”

Currently, she paints often and says her favorite subject is “surreal, tranquil, and, occasionally, liminal landscapes, such as a classroom at midnight, an overgrown, abandoned church, and a long corridor that leads nowhere. For me, these landscapes represent a longing for a space that exists tranquilly, where one can be one's true self.”

Nguyen painted Submerged specifically for this contest; “In other words, this contest inspired me to look inward and reflect on — instead of simply overcome and move forward from — the challenges that I have encountered in medical school.” Through the work she wanted “to convey the various feelings that I experienced while studying for board exams using motifs that are near and dear to me like water and fish in a surreal, tranquil, and liminal ambience.” She painted it during time dedicated to Step 1, over the course of a week, working on it for an hour to two at night.

Hunger , On Chinese Medicine , and On the First Day of Anatomy Lab

First-year Physician Associate (PA) student Kelly Dunn was honored with three prizes: A tie for first place in prose for Hunger , a tie for second place in poetry for On Chinese Medicine , and honorable mention in prose for On the First Day of Anatomy Lab , each of which she shared with the audience. While Dunn, who “always considered the humanities to be a part of my life,” has been an avid reader and artist for as long as she can remember, she did not start writing until the COVID-19 pandemic. She says she mostly wrote nonfiction, and only semi-frequently, “whenever something momentous transpired, or I suddenly felt called to it,” explaining, “so much of my love and appreciation for writing comes from the fact that it’s a medium to better articulate an experience through. Having something so fresh and felt so acutely is a wonderful impetus to begin writing.”

The contest was one of Dunn’s first times writing poetry, “I’ve always been intimidated by it. Learning the different poetic forms and metric lines, as well as how to be economical with my words, seems like something I’ll never be able to achieve.” She continued, “I’m grateful for this contest for giving me an opportunity to try”

For Dunn, writing in PA school has been “incredibly helpful processing all that has happened. Every day I vacillate between feelings of immense wonder, humility, and gratitude— and these words in themselves don’t even do the moments I’ve witnessed justice.”

Acknowledgements

Reisman thanked PHM Manager Karen Kolb for her work coordinating the contest, and the 16 YSM faculty and staff members who served as judges:

Aba Black, MD, MHS, Anne Merritt, MD, MS, Terry Dagradi, Sarah Cross, MD, Lorence Gutterman, MD, Melissa Grafe, PhD, Randi Hutter-Epstein, MD, MPH, Kenneth Morford, MD, Sharon Ostfeld-Johns, MD, Vincent Quagliarello, MD, Lisa Sanders, MD, Nora Segar, MD, Elizabeth Marhoffer, MD, Rita Rienzo MMSC, PA-C, Sharon Chekijian, MD, PhH, and Cynthia McNamara, MD.

Featured in this article

• Aba Black, MD, MHS
• Sharon Anoush Chekijian, MD, MPH
• Sarah Cross, MD
• Terry Dagradi
• Randi Epstein
• Melissa Grafe, PhD
• Lorence Gutterman, MD
• Lenique Huggins
• Karen P Kolb
• Elizabeth Marhoffer, MD
• Cynthia Frary McNamara, MD, FACP
• Anne Merritt, MD, MS
• Kenneth Morford, MD, FASAM
• Hang Nguyen
• Sharon Ostfeld-Johns, MD, IBCLC
• Vincent Quagliarello, MD
• Anna Reisman, MD
• Rita Rienzo, MMSc, PA-C
• Lisa Sanders, MD, FACP
• Nora Segar, MD

Related Links

• Contest winners
• 4 YSN Students Earn Prizes at Health Professions Creative Writing and Art Contest
• On Chinese Medicine
• On the First Day of Anatomy Lab