Poetry please....

Reading poetry to a child or children is great but sometimes people (teachers included) are perhaps a bit scared to do it, maybe worried only academics can understand it or it's too hard, not for us ordinary folk. I've often used Tennyson's 'The lady of Shalott' with KS2 children because it's a great STORY but not just that: ones that sound great like Spike Milligan's NING NANG NONG (slightly different from Tennyson!), Michael Rosen poems,'Heard it in the Playground' and 'Please Mrs. Butler' by Allan Ahlberg, 'The Coat of Umpteen Pockets by Adrian Mitchell and Kit Wright's 'The Magic Box' which has gone on to inspire many a child to consider what they'd put in their own Magic Box in their own poem. They're written to be READ, ENJOYED, spoken out loud.Poetry is great to dip into and easy to remember for years and years to come....'Ning nang hong, cows go bong, nong nang ning trees go ping....' need I say more?
Oooh but I do need to just say:
Here's the Magic Box poem for your perusal and one from a favourite film of mine 'INVICTUS' to inspire......

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            Invictus


Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul. 



William Ernest Henley

         The Magic Box 
            by Kit Wright

I will put in the box
the swish of a silk sari on a summer night,
fire from the nostrils of a Chinese dragon, 
the tip of a tongue touching a tooth.
I will put in the box
a snowman with a rumbling belly,
a sip of the bluest water from Lake Lucerne,
a leaping spark from an electric fish.
I will put into the box
three violet wishes spoken in Gujarati,
the last joke of an ancient uncle,
and the first smile of a baby.
I will put into the box
a fifth season and a black sun,
a cowboy on a broomstick
and a witch on a white horse.
My box is fashioned from ice and gold and steel,
with stars on the lid and secrets in the corners.
Its hinges are the toe joints of dinosaurs.
I shall surf in my box
on the great high-rolling breakers of the wild Atlantic,
then wash ashore on a yellow beach
the color of the sun.