Reconceptualising Poetry as a Multimodal Genre

Abstract

This conceptual article theorises the role of poetry in English classrooms from a multimodal perspective. It discusses the gap between the practices of poetry inside and outside South African schools, particularly where English is taught as an additional language (EAL). The former is shown to be monomodal and prescriptive, while the latter is multimodal and exciting. The reconceptualisation of poetry as a multimodal genre is effected through the integration of multimodality and orality, two fields of study that deal with meaning making. The article attempts to bridge the divide between poetry in print and in performance. It begins with a critique of the current conceptualisation of poetry that underlies the EAL curriculum, practice, and assessment in South Africa. Through bringing multimodality and oral studies together complementarily, and building on empirical studies, an alternative conceptualisation of poetry is constructed. An English poem by a South African Xhosa‐speaking poet is used to demonstrate the curricular, pedagogic, and research implications of this alternative approach. The authors argue that poetry, if reconceptualised as a multimodal genre, can rejuvenate literacy, particularly in classrooms where English is not the first language of students.

Multimodality in Education: Some Directions and Some Questions

“…Newfield and d'Abdon (, this issue) describe the opposite trajectory—reopening an interest in language via the detour of multimodality. Once we have encountered embodied language, language in the concrete forms in which we actually encounter it as speech and writing, and in context, once we have experienced the intimate connections between speech, voice, and body action, and between writing and the forms, colors, and textures of printed words, we can perhaps look anew at the power of words to evoke images and concepts, even on their own, as beautifully voiced in a poem by one a student of one of the article's authors: “I carve each alphabetical soul in its position …that's how paper and I talked.”…”

Indigenous South African poetry as conduits of History: Epi-poetics – a pedagogy of memory

“…The Thebuwa approach could conceivably have been used in the history classroom as well, where learners could have written themselves into a history project through a multimodal design. Newfield and D'Abdon (2015) illustrate that poetry allows for a multimodal experience in the classroom, as it represents not only the poem on the page, but also the live performances and audience participation. Therefore, it facilitates a reader and viewer-response to learning.…”

Toward an Embodied Systemic Functional Linguistics Pedagogy

“…In the larger field of multimodality and second language learning, embodiment is approached through exploratory practice (Allwright & Hanks, 2009;Hanks, 2015aHanks, , 2015b, literacy walks (Chern & Dooley, 2014), poetry (Newfield & D'abdon, 2015), drama (Cannon, 2017), and other out-of-school literacies such as video gaming (Sayer & Ban, 2014). While not always explicitly attentive to the concept itself, these studies make an important contribution to the embodied turn in language education (Nevile, 2015), as they illustrate how engagement with the physical-material world facilitates the production of meaning and knowledge.…”