Poetry Unlocked : Developing Skills for Reading and Understanding Poetry

Poetry Unlocked: Developing Skills for Reading and Understanding Poetry is a secondary school text written by experienced classroom English teachers. The book clearly explains the techniques, devices, forms, and styles of poetry and illustrates these concepts through a range of poems accessible to secondary school students. In each chapter, students are encouraged to apply their knowledge about poetic forms and devices using a variety of activities – oral and written, individual, and group.

This text will help students to – learn about the importance and relevance of poetry – increase their knowledge of the ‘tools’, devices, forms and styles that poets use to make their message more effective – increase their knowledge of the poet’s purpose and point of view in writing poetry – analyze poems – create their own poetry. The text is clearly organized with a summary at the end of each chapter and a summary of key terms at the end of the book. It is not necessary to work through each chapter in sequence. However, previous learning is reinforced by revisiting earlier concepts in later chapters. The text contains over 100 poems indexed by title and author.