How to Write Poems for Children – Part 1

Waldorf Report Verses and Birthday Verses are a pedagogical tool that is to be handled mindfully. These inspirational poems for children are to reflect the art of poetry and express reverence for the miracle of life’s journey on earth in ways that are as diverse as the children themselves.

Excellent verses have been written over the years by scores of talented teachers. Such examples can be found in a number of publications, and also in the archives of experienced colleagues.

This tutorial by my first guest author gives detailed guidance on how to write poems for children yourself.

WRITING POEMS FOR CHILDREN – by david donaldson

What follows is a digest of workshops given at three SWSF conferences. I found writing the verses challenging, but healthily so, being a necessary exercise in developing living, imaginative thinking. The children’s response also made it a worthwhile part of the daily and weekly class rhythm, at least up until Class 5. Thereafter, the personally written verse seemed less relevant to their development, and dropping it felt like respecting the transition they were going through. There is a strong case for returning to birthday verses in Class 7 and 8 by way of poems or extracts from world literature; examples of mature human thought, striving and aspiration that feel appropriate to them individually.

What are Report Verses and Birthday Verses, and why do we use them?

These verses are your gift to the child, recognising in them their unique developing individuality. As such they are intended to help the child step into the stream of the Word; into the realm of the “I AM”, source of their individual spirit.

In Rudolf Steiner’s words, “human beings as well as nature are filled with the divine.”

With this in mind, our verses will seek to nourish and strengthen the child’s inmost self, her natural love and joy in nature, friends and family. We raise to consciousness how all these good things are expressions of the divine, evoking feelings of devotion, respect and gratitude.

Such verses are most often used between Classes 2 and 5. For the older classes, classical poems or prose passages may be chosen to challenge and enrich both feeling life and understanding.

THE STREAM OF THE WORD

Rudolf Steiner, Speech and Drama Course:

“In the sounds of speech live Divine Beings, and we must approach these beings with devotion, with prayerful devotion. They will then be the very best teachers we could possibly have.”

In our uprightness, rightly conceived, lies our human dignity. Our hands are free to form the world about us. Our head, likewise freed from the horizontal plane and resting in balanced stillness on neck and shoulders, provides the possibility for self-awareness and the development of our sense of self, distinct from (though still part of) the groups in which we live. This in turn depends upon our capacity for language, to speak and think.

In young children, we as teachers are carrying on “the work of the gods”, and our verses are part of this:

Speaking their verse, the child stands upright, well grounded. The words we have composed are directed towards bringing balance and harmony into their soul life, addressing and nourishing their individual self.

STANDING UPRIGHT

Though there is a public-speaking aspect to reciting the verse, this is not its primary intention. The focus is on helping develop the quality of the speaking aloud, irrespective of the audience. Though listening to the speaker is obviously an important exercise for the rest of the class.

I suggest that the uprightness in posture, which is most supportive to speech, is best achieved when the child is standing on their own at the back of the class, facing you. This way there will be no distraction from eye contact with peers. Their focus is on you, who will be encouraging them (perhaps with gestures supporting the rhythms) as you feel appropriate.

It also helps, when the verse is first handed over for the child to take home and learn, that you read it aloud – standing upright, of course – so that everyone can hear it spoken as you intend.

BRINGING BALANCE TO SOUL LIFE

Individual verses can address a range of needs:

• to feel safe, protected, reassured and held
• to overcome fears, anxieties, timidity and shyness
• to gain more courage and mental strength
• to evoke feelings of wonder and reverence
• to learn to trust and have faith

They may point to imbalances, finding a middle way between extremes:

• dreaminess and lack of focus
• a tendency to be naughty
• a tendency to be unkind, putting others down 
• possessiveness of friends, excluding others
• intolerance of differences

Or they may address issues of temperament:

• the forceful choleric
• the butterfly sanguine
• the wallowing melancholic
• the sleepy phlegmatic

In general, the tone of such verses aims to celebrate life, looking forward with hope, having faith in the future, gaining confidence in yourself and the gifts that lie within you.

WRITING VERSES – STARTING OFF

Writing Report or Birthday Verses is different to writing reports. The report is a summary of our observations, the verse a more imaginative attempt to connect with the being of the child, to be inspired by this, as Steiner suggested.

A good starting point is to use this meditation verse the night before, so you can sleep on it:

A Teacher’s Thoughts for his Children
by Rudolf Steiner

You who out of heaven’s brightness
Now descend to earthly darkness
Thus through life’s resisting forces
Spirit radiance to unfold
Spirit warmness to enkindle
Spirit forces to call forth

Be you warmed through by my love:
Radiant thinking
Tranquil feeling
Healing willing –

That, in spirit’s heights well rooted
And in earth’s foundations working
You may servants of the Word become
Spirit illumining
Love evoking
Being strengthening

A THREEFOLD PROCESS

1) Thinking of the child and their name, we hold a mental picture and wait to see what arises. Images? Colours? Words?

Other things will begin to play into this meditation: temperament, the time of year and the season of the child’s birth month. Themes and stories of the current main lesson, and particular issues that may be foremost for you concerning this child at that time.

Out of this rich mix, thoughts linked to images will (hopefully) come, condensing into word-pictures and phrases. Jot down what arises. Don’t rush into putting words together. Give time to this random jotting down, so you get a range of possible starting points to consider.

2) Feeling is carried by the words’ sounds and rhythms. Sounds consist of vowels and consonants, and rhythm is the natural flow of speech, not poetry’s metre. Feeling is also addressed by the use of rhyme, satisfying musical order and completion.

3) Will is addressed in the verse’s beat, the metre. In English, the iambic pentameter is most common, whose typical line has five beats: “Shall I comPARE thee TO a SUMmer’s DAY?”

Spoken metrically, such regular stresses make this line sound ridiculous. It is in the interplay of metre and spoken rhythm that will and feeling become engaged in all manner of subtle ways.

Will on its own becomes dull doggerel. The monotonous Waldorf drone of metrical recitation, for example, is unenlivened will. This is something to pay attention to in recitation in general, not only in the speaking of verses.

If the speech lapses into, is ‘taken over’ by the metre, it needs to be challenged because the feelings are not being properly engaged.

POEMS FOR CHILDREN – THE FORM

Speaking a verse which makes use of metre, rhythm and rhyme helps the memory. It supports the rhythmic system through healthy breathing, encourages the feelings in the verse to be expressed and strengthens the will.

It may be appropriate to consider the child’s temperament, for each temperament has particularly suitable metres. But this should be a help, not another hurdle you feel pressured to jump.

The danger with composing to a fixed metre is that it encourages mechanical metrical recitation which bypasses the feelings as stated above. Always make sure that whatever metre you’re employing does not drown out the natural rhythms of speech.

There are up to 24 classical metres, but only four are usually considered relevant to English verse:

• iambic (short LONG, short LONG, short LONG…)
• trochee (LONG short, LONG short, LONG short …)
• anapaest (short short LONG, short short LONG …)
• dactyl (LONG short short, LONG short short …)

Iambic and anapaest have a ‘rising’ rhythm and a forward-moving feel, which is associated with the choleric and the sanguine temperament. Trochee and dactyl have a ‘falling’ rhythm that holds back, which suits melancholic and phlegmatic temperaments.

THE IAMBIC

The iambic’s pulse of short LONG, short LONG, short LONG … is close to spoken English and therefore the most commonly used metre for our Report or Birthday Verses:

I stand in sunlight straight and true
God’s loving light warms all I do
Around me, light protects me so
No harm will come to me, I know
My feet on earth I firmly place
And strengthened, love to run and chase
My friends are here on either hand
To share and learn with them, I stand

Of course this could be spoken in such a way that the metre destroys the natural rhythm of speech. Though the metre is a supportive pulse, it is the expressiveness of the natural rhythm that counts.

THE TROCHEE

The trochee’s pulse is: LONG short, LONG short, LONG short … etc. The following verse for a melancholic child is to inspire courage:

Shade and sunshine, plain and forest
Sometimes gloomy, sometimes bright
So the path winds on before me
Till it disappears from sight
Lurking dragons do not daunt me
Stars shine brightest in the night
Courage, strength and love will lead me
Sun by day beam down its beauty
Warm my heart and shed its light

The natural rhythm of speech interacts with this regular beat to enhance expressiveness.

THE ANAPAEST

The anapaest’s pulse is: short short LONG, short short LONG … etc. This rhythm, suited to the sanguine temperament (or the choleric, depending on content) makes good eurythmic stepping exercises:

Brave and true – I will be
Each good deed – Sets me free
Each kind word – Makes me strong
I will fight – For the right
I will conquer – The wrong

In a Birthday or Report Verse, it would challenge a choleric child to wrestle the natural rhythm of speech away from the dominant metre.

THE CHORIAMBUS

Another metre for cholerics is the choriambus. Its pulse is: LONG short short LONG, LONG short short LONG …

Dark now the forest
Dim lies the way
Ride then with courage
Night, noon and day
Ride then with strength
Streaming through limbs and heart
No thorn or briar
Me from my task will part

The choriambus holds the balance between going forward and holding back. Though the rider is pressing on in choleric fashion, his inner focus is on the task at hand.

THE DACTYL

The dactyl’s pulse is: LONG short short, LONG short short … etc. The following example (not a Birthday Verse) is suited to the phlegmatic temperament:

Sit in the shade of the willow
Lulled by the swirl of the stream
Clouds overhead slowly passing
What’s there to do but to dream?

The metre is very dominant here and creates that sleepy, dreamy effect which needs something to wake it up.

METRES IN PRACTICE

When getting started, it is helpful to consider the child’s temperament. Maybe the corresponding metre suggests an initial phrase, arising from the notes you jotted down.

Here is an attempt to address a phlegmatic child. It starts using the dactyl for the opening line, but then goes on with rhyming couplets:

Held in the hills as the clouds drift by
The lake lies dreaming beneath the sky
Till fed by the sun’s life-giving rains
It rises from sleep and pours to the plains
Woodlands and meadows, the birds as they fly
Rejoice at its life-gift sparkling by

All sorts of things are going on here, and one needs to decide how it might best be spoken as an exercise to ‘awaken’ the child.

Starting with the anapaest for a sanguine child led to a similar result:

From the heights of the hills to the widths of the bay
The wandering waters wind their way
With bubble and babble and cascading rills
Never once pausing, never once still:
Now flashing in sunlight, now lost underground
Now springing to sight with a gushing sound
Now trickling in brooks, now swelling to streams
Now gathering in rivers as if waking from dreams

The guiding metre is soon ditched in favour of lines with evident stresses. The idea being to challenge the sanguine with a verse that requires a lot of breath and fluency, but is directed to a clear purpose to be achieved:

To join hands together, refresh man, beast and tree
Secure in their course flowing down to the sea

Again the classical metre helped to get started, but then led to other rhythms that imitate the flow of water.

In summary: Verse metres have to serve the content you are focusing on. They are not to subjugate the natural rhythms of speech to their metrical beat.

To be continued next week with Part 2: THE CONTENT OF POEMS FOR CHILDREN.

See an overview of David Donaldson’s publications and poem samples here:

Comments are welcome, so don’t hesitate to share experiences, questions and feedback below.

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