This is a genuine afterthought [which I state now as I had previously tweeted I wouldn’t be referring to this work again…]:

One of my favourite ideas of those you can find here for tomorrow’s National Poetry Day is the Change Quotes one where I have written in the teacher’s notes about using an online random word generator and so on to use with a class to undertake this approach.

Well, that’s what I do/did for mine, and it’s great fun, but it does need access to PCs/tablets for class use in school, which I acknowledge, and is probably quite problematic, which I acknowledge.

You know how some things take a long time to catch you up? Like the obvious?

Well, the apocalypse just now is: use paper and scissors! Do a bit of William Burroughs and simply indulge in some retro cut-ups where you supply the quotes on paper [photocopied so retro-techno too], students cut out the lines with scissors [or phrases from the lines, or just words – but I am complicating] and these are put in a bag/hat/sack/box or simply turned face down on a desk and they are then picked out/turned over at random and

PRESTO – you have your randomised cut-up Change Quotes poem to write out in the existential order of their selection!

Simples.

Likening oracy to black pudding was more serious than it seemed – that being the point – and if you read that posting here you will see I was both welcoming and ruing the contemporary focus on oracy in the classroom. My latter sentiment was based on the fact I had championed it, with some others, way back in the mid-1980s and it therefore seemed a little sad within the overall positive feel of its contemporary attention that it still required a rationale/justification for its essential classroom use.

In searching through a long-forgotten and recently found box of stuff [I am innately nostalgic and a hoarder to fuel this proclivity] I discovered among various personally relevant gems the following article I wrote for the Times Educational Supplement in 1984. This was only four years into my English teaching career and I am a little surprised at my confident conviction then – but proud of that, on reflection – and it was borne at the time out of the excellent mentoring and exemplification I received from my Head of Department. This was consolidated by my own classroom practice focusing on oracy and also the local authority English Advisor asking me to present my ideas and experiences to Heads of English at a HOD conference when I was still such a relative novice: those amazing days of professional stimulation and support in Devon, and elsewhere – you see, such deep nostalgia.

I continue to have my mixed feelings. We came a long way to implanting oracy into widespread classroom practice throughout the 90s and a little beyond, including significantly Speaking and Listening as an integral part of GCSE English assessment, but this has now disappeared as that ‘validated’ core, and even the theoretical basis of oracy’s proven value seems to be clouded by time. Thanks to the work of, among others I’m sure, Voice 21 [and read about my learning curve on this here], the English & Media Centre and NATE, that cloud is lifted by continuing promotion.

Here’s the article:

To read and/or enlarge, the article can also be viewed here: gnomes of oracy

Thus stimulated [see previous post] I found a poem Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote about Mathematics – entirely new to me – and this seemed an ideal familial work for the computer program to analyse, using as it does such numerical calculations.

Here’s Coleridge’s explanation/defense for writing and the poem to provide context for what follows. Enjoy:

To the Rev. George Coleridge.

Dear Brother,
I have often been surprised that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause; viz. that though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily travelling on a dreary desert. To assist Reason by the stimulus of Imagination is the design of the following production. In the execution of it much may be objectionable. The verse (particularly in the introduction of the ode) may be accused of unwarrantable liberties, but they are liberties equally homogeneal with the exactness of Mathematical disquisition, and the boldness of Pindaric daring. I have three strong champions to defend me against the attacks of Criticism: the Novelty, the Difficulty, and the Utility of the work. I may justly plume myself that I first have drawn the nymph Mathesis from the visionary caves of abstracted idea, and caused her to unite with Harmony. The first-born of this Union I now present to you; with interested motives indeed — as I expect to receive in return the more valuable offspring of your Muse.

Thine ever,
S.T.C.

A Mathematical Problem

This is now–this was erst,
Proposition the first–and Problem the first.

I.
On a given finite Line
Which must no way incline;
To describe an equi–
–lateral Tri–
–A, N, G, L, E.
Now let A. B.
Be the given line
Which must no way incline;
The great Mathematician
Makes this Requisition,
That we describe an Equi–
–lateral Tri–
–angle on it:
Aid us, Reason–aid us, Wit!

II.
From the centre A. at the distance A. B.
Describe the circle B. C. D.
At the distance B. A. from B. the centre
The round A. C. E. to describe boldly venture.
(Third Postulate see.)
And from the point C.
In which the circles make a pother
Cutting and slashing one another,
Bid the straight lines a journeying go,
C. A., C. B. those lines will show.
To the points, which by A. B. are reckon’d,
And postulate the second
For Authority ye know.
A. B. C.
Triumphant shall be
An Equilateral Triangle,
Not Peter Pindar carp, not Zoilus can wrangle.

III.
Because the point A. is the centre
Of the circular B. C. D.
And because the point B. is the centre
Of the circular A. C. E.
A. C. to A. B. and B. C. to B. A.
Harmoniously equal for ever must stay;
Then C. A. and B. C.
Both extend the kind hand
To the basis, A. B.
Unambitiously join’d in Equality’s Band.
But to the same powers, when two powers are equal,
My mind forbodes the sequel;
My mind does some celestial impulse teach,
And equalises each to each.
Thus C. A. with B. C. strikes the same sure alliance,
That C. A. and B. C. had with A. B. before;
And in mutual affiance,
None attempting to soar
Above another,
The unanimous three
C. A. and B. C. and A. B.
All are equal, each to his brother,
Preserving the balance of power so true:
Ah! the like would the proud Autocratorix do!
At taxes impending not Britain would tremble,
Nor Prussia struggle her fear to dissemble;
Nor the Mah’met-sprung Wight,
The great Mussulman
Would stain his Divan
With Urine the soft-flowing daughter of Fright.

IV.
But rein your stallion in, too daring Nine!
Should Empires bloat the scientific line?
Or with dishevell’d hair all madly do ye run
For transport that your task is done?
For done it is–the cause is tried!
And Proposition, gentle Maid,
Who soothly ask’d stern Demonstration’s aid,
Has prov’d her right, and A. B. C.
Of Angles three
Is shown to be of equal side;
And now our weary steed to rest in fine,
‘Tis rais’d upon A. B. the straight, the given line.

The rhyme scheme assertion is sublimely anal [not abbreviation for analytical…].

In searching for some possible background detail on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Sonnet Xviii. To the Autumnal Moon [which I posted today on the Coleridge Memorial Trust Facebook page], I came across one of those surprising and magical finds – a computer analysis of the poem, and what an absurd hoot it is:

It is as secure as it can be within the context of its nonsense on the mathematical basis of the poem – and I have no idea if the program used this to interpret it as a sonnet or the word ‘sonnet’ in its title – but the reference to its use of exclamation marks, and subsequent extrapolation of excitement, is momentous!

I thought I’d explore what the computer program does with a less traditional poetic form, so the following is its analysis of Gertrude Stein’s A Blue Coat. The extrapolation here about its ‘closest stanza type’ is so reassuring in how we might not need to fear all artificial intelligence:

Here’s the poem:

A blue coat is guided guided away, guided and guided away, that is the particular color that is used for that length and not any width not even more than a shadow.

[NB: if interested/engaged, please read the following post]

Most pleased to have two prose poems here today, found deep in the Mojave desert. Thank you Jeffrey.