Fiji. Jan 2018.

A big group of kids were singing and dancing in a lagoon in front of me. They were so happy, and all parents joined the happy time. It was in Fiji Time, No Worry – No Hurry. The instructor was talking like rapping. He probably has talked a thousand times with kids to entertain them, and his form of speech naturally turns to lyrical way – like rapping. Kids, and also adults, totally engaged to the instructor’s program: singing and dancing in the lagoon.

I have been working with kids in Rolling Fun program for a while, and I have found that songs and music will get kids learning new things quickly. That is the power of music and songs. And a lot of songs are from lyrical poems.

No doubt that kids love poem books because they have rhymes, rhythm, and even lyrical poem. A half of books in local libraries probably are poetry books.

One early morning, while the Fiji resort was in heavily raining, sitting in a balcony and stretching my eyes out to the ocean, I just thought that why I shouldn’t try a new approach to my Rolling Fun program. POETRY style. 

I don’t know how I could write a poem of about 200 lines, nearly 6 pages in that morning. It might reflect a theory in a master course that I am studying in Swinburne: a creative idea and its result will pop up in an uncontrolled way. It might happened due to the relax time in Fiji, drinking beer, playing with kids in the beach, or the raining morning; or the happiness of kids in a Rolling Fun workshop in a primary school before Xmas last year; or something else. Or because of all of those reasons.

I just knew that after pausing my engineer left-brain side for a while, and focusing using my right-brain side, I have got back my past love in the past in literature, which was the most favorite subject when I was in my secondary school time.

The below is a part in the introduction in the poem:

…..

So, what’s today program?

To fill up your time

First you will learn

Where the food is from.

Second you will know

What recipe’s in rainbow

Third I will show

How to make the food like a pro

Last you get hands-on

Step by step to make your own

….

Then I checked my work with some poetry-topic books so that I can edit and develop further. So far I have read these books.

1- How to write Poetry, Arco, 

2- Patterns in Poetry, Forms and themes for the primary classrooms, Jo Hinchliffe, 1995

3- Pizza, Pigs, and Poetry, How to Write a Poem, Jack Prelutsky, Children’s Poet Laureate, 2008

4- The Writer’s Idea Book, How to develop great ideas for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Screenplays, 

Jack Heffron, 10th Edition, 2011

I hope that I can meet a poet someday to guide me more in this very creative and challenged area.