Have you ever tried to write a poem? I think, each of us did it at least once in his life. But why? Why is poetry so attractive to all of us? Probably, there were moments in our lives when we desired to express emotions and feelings buried deeply inside our souls for all people to learn about and share them. Whatever the reason might be, poems are really attractive no matter who you are a reader or a poet yourself. And that is why a classroom activity can become more interesting and exciting if you use a poem in it. Poems are useful as they make our students think figuratively and critically, develop their imagination, enrich their language with metaphors and other stylistic devices; they simply make our students be creative. Poems can be used for various aims like listening for authentic English, introducing the topic of the lesson or new vocabulary, providing an opportunity for fluency practice, developing learners’ awareness of pronunciation or intonation patterns, training learners’ reading skills and others. It means that poems can be used at any stage of the lesson: they become perfect warmers or the basis for organizing group discussion or even role plays. 

Once you’ve decided to use a poem in your lesson, be careful and follow certain rules how to choose the right one for your students:

1.     Decide at what stage of the lesson and for what activities and aims you are going to use a poem before choosing it. You may need a descriptive poem for essay writing or a poem-story for discussion activities or teaching grammar.

2.     Make sure a poem you chose is approximately the same language level as your students have.

3.     Try to choose a poem which meets your students’ life interests, otherwise they can get bored.

4.     Choose a poem which somehow correlates with what you are currently studying in the classroom.

5.     Try to find something which reflects real life’s events or dates in order not to be isolated from the world outside.

And, of course, analyze the language of your poem, whether it will be of great use for learners or not.

Today, I taught my students a lesson which is devoted to the life and creativity of one great Russian poet and actor – Vladimir Vysotsky as tomorrow it could be the 74nd birthday if he was alive. At the very beginning of the lesson, to warm up my students I read my own poem:

More than 30 years have passed since You closed your eyes,

Since your panting heart stopped beating any more,

Since your soul stopped struggling with all those lies

And deceivers, relieved, closed the book of cold war.

But, Vladimir, whate’er betide, You must be immortal,

You stay alive in your songs that warm our hearts.

You lived to the full but only left unfinished the dottle.

You keep evoking the whole world and its every single part.

Your poems appeal to turn the moral standards inside out,

Revealing nude veritas for all people to contemplate.

While reading them we love, we loath, we flout!

Oh, God! What Geniuses You sometimes create!

Time runs, the workers of evil vanish, epochs fade

And only men of such great talent will forever stay!

The effect was great! I caught their breaths and attention for the following 45 minutes! And now I know, poems do work for us without a hitch…