Teaching Poetry in the Primary Classroom

When asked by the school inspector what he thought of poetry, an eleven year old replied that "it's all la-dida and daffodils, isn't it?" In his primary school the boy had come across very little poetry apart from nursery rhymes, snatches of rhyming verse and a few comic pieces and nonsense poems. Poetry to him was something arcane, not really related to his own life. He had studied no powerful, c...