Happy World Poetry Day!!
As World Poetry Day approaches, which is celebrated on the 21st March, it would be a nice idea to incorporate poetry-based activities in your English lessons. 1) Starting with the following poem Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish, you may request students identify the figurative language used in poetry such as metaphors, alliteration, onomatopoeia, personification, similes and hyperboles. 2) Next step is to underline the words that rhyme in the poem. 3) Since Ars Poetica , that means the Art of Poetry, was first written by Horace in which he advises poets on the art of writing poetry, you can have students read both poems and compare them. You may even resort to other poems as well which have been influenced by Horace's Ars Poetica like the Uses of Poetry by Williams Carlos Williams (1909), Poetry by Marianne Moore (1919) or even a more modern one like Teaching the Ape to write Poem s by James Tate (1991). 4) Another activity would be to urge students come up w...