There are fantastic poetry textbooks in our school library. Ask your teacher or me if you need help identifying good poems in a textbook. Here are some great titles:
BlueLight, Clear Atoms. Of particular interest are the poems that focus on war (Wilfred Owen is one of my favourites). Look for Macfarlane in the 811 section.
Appreciating Poetry. Take a look at the Satire and Youth And Age sections. Look for Sadler in the 811 section.
Punch On Punch Off. For those who worry that poetry has to be highly literary and have 'high brow' content, this book of poetry by an Australian ex boxer will dispel that myth. Look for Goodfellow in the 811 section.
A great protest poem to get you started is Strange Fruit by Abel Meeropol. It's great because of it's complex political history and the fact it is being constantly 'reborn'. It was a poem sparked by a picture of a lynching, which was then turned into a song by Billie Holiday, which has been covered many times in history and has had a film made about it. To read the poem and read an in depth article about it (long, but I promise it's fascinating) go to "Strange Fruit": The Story of a Song. If you want to see the picture that sparked it (warning: graphic) go here.
Now that you've been introduced to protest poetry, go on an exploration of your own. You can search for protest poetry at the search engine PoemHunter.com or the Poetry Foundation. When searching you will get some good results from looking for "protest poetry", but try and use specific keywords on themes you're interested in. For example, "Autism". (This finds 20 poems in PoemHunter - I read the first two in the list and they are both examples of protest poetry.)
To get the most out of your reading of protest poetry make sure you:
A great protest poem to get you started is Strange Fruit by Abel Meeropol. It's great because of it's complex political history and the fact it is being constantly 'reborn'. It was a poem sparked by a picture of a lynching, which was then turned into a song by Billie Holiday, which has been covered many times in history and has had a film made about it. To read the poem and read an in depth article about it (long, but I promise it's fascinating) go to "Strange Fruit": The Story of a Song. If you want to see the picture that sparked it (warning: graphic) go here.
Now that you've been introduced to protest poetry, go on an exploration of your own. You can search for protest poetry at the search engine PoemHunter.com or the Poetry Foundation. When searching you will get some good results from looking for "protest poetry", but try and use specific keywords on themes you're interested in. For example, "Autism". (This finds 20 poems in PoemHunter - I read the first two in the list and they are both examples of protest poetry.)
To get the most out of your reading of protest poetry make sure you: