Kennings

Kennings are easy-peasy poems which you can write quite quickly.  They often describe an animal, or something from nature, without ever saying what it is.  They are made up of short lines using only two words each. 

To start your kenning, choose something to write about; you could pick anything, parrot or hedgehog or kangaroo (or if your brother or sister has been particularly annoying, you could choose them!) 

Start by deciding on two really good words which describe your animal or person.  For example, if you are writing a kenning about a hedgehog, your first two words might be “garden snuffler” or “snail cruncher”. If you are writing about your brother, you might start with “biscuit stealer”.  You will need to come up with about ten pairs of words to describe your animal or person, and then, hey presto, you will have a kenning!

Here is a kenning Nathan wrote about a mole, and one Matilda wrote about a swan:

Mole                                                                            Swan

Worm muncher                                                         Water glider

brilliant digger                                                           one maker

nocturnal mover                                                        pride giver

browny colour                                                            food diver

good senser                                                                 water liver

blind eye-er                                                                long necker

earth burrower                                                          baby carrier

tiny traveller                                                               fox feeder

soil scratcher                                                              grows whiter

long liver.

Nathan Luetchford                                                   Matilda Benjamin

Haiku

Another simple form of poetry you can try is the Haiku (pronounced hi-koo). 

Haiku are Japanese poems, and if you can clap and count, you can write one. 

They are also only three lines long (brilliant if you want to get on your mum’s good side in a hurry).

In order to write a haiku, you will have to count syllables (pronounced sill-a-bulls).  Syllables are parts of words, a bit like a beat or a sound in music.  For example; elephant has 3 syllables or beats (el-e-phant), Dracula also has 3 syllables(drac-u-la) but snack has only one (snack is one long sound).  Fantastic has 3 (fan-tast-ic), jelly has 2 (jel-ly), rhinoceros has 4 (rhin-oc-er-os).

It helps sometimes to clap the words like this:

‘drac (clap) ‘u’ (clap)- ‘la’ (clap), or ‘straw’ (clap)- ‘ber’ (clap) ‘ry’ (clap)

Can you clap (go on, no-one is looking) and count how many syllables are in the following words?

scarecrow, party, medicine (yuk!), flute, hopscotch, mouse.

Now you are whizzy at counting syllables, you can have a go at a haiku.  Haiku are bit like taking a mini photograph of something, and really clever writers make their haiku meaningful, so the poem makes a comment about the world and life and why we are all here.  But it is perfectly ok just to write one about a spider.    

The first line of a haiku is only 5 syllables long, the middle line has 7 syllables, and the final line has 5 again.

Have a look at Oli’s haiku and see if you can count and clap the syllables.

Puffin

Sitting on a rock                          

waves splashing up beside him  

fish clutched in his beak             

Oli (10)

(sitt - ing on a rock) (5)

(fish clutched in his beak) (5)

Here is another:

Cat

Eating and sleeping                     

snoozing all day, lazy cat!            

Pouncing on small mice              

Oli (10)

(eat-ing and sleep-ing) (5)

(snooz-ing all day la-zy cat )(7)

(pounc-ing on small mice) (5)

Have a go at writing your own haiku, just count and clap a word to find out how many syllables it has.