Fascinating international EFL poetry anthology"Poetry as a Foreign Language" is the first ever international anthology of poetry connected with English as a Foreign or Second Language - a lively and fascinating collection of poems by a wide variety of people worldwide - teachers and learners, from Argentina to Zimbabwe. The poems are thematically arranged so as make them accessible and to spark off ideas for further creative writing.
168 pages - Contents:
1. Experience of Learning 2. Classroom Interaction 3. The Teacher Reflects 4. Language and Identity 5. A Meeting of Cultures 6. Appeals to Language 7. The Ghost in the Textbook 8. A Meeting of Languages 9. Enter the Expert 10. Migration and Exile 11. The Second Person 12. Expatriate Life 13. Language Play 14. Dreaming in a Foreign Language
+ notes on poems and contributors and a typology of poems to help with their use in the classroom
This anthology bridges the worlds of poetry and of English as a Foreign Language and has roused enthusiastic responses in both.
Some reviews and comments:
"(Poetry as a Foreign Language) began as an international EFL poetry-writing competition, and has grown into a collection that opens a new and fascinating window on the individuals who teach and the people who pass through their classrooms." - Guardian Weekly: Learning English Supplement
"A lively international anthology linked to the experience of English as a foreign or second language and written by teachers, students, teacher trainers and linguists." - The Herald, Scotland
"I had a wonderful time reading the poems and the enjoyment urged me to share the experience with my fellow teachers in our country." - Ilona Jobbágy, Hungary
"The collection contains poems by a handful of poets ... who already enjoy considerable reputations in the wider poetic community. And when you think of yet more illustrious language teacher/writers - James Joyce, say, or John Fowles - it’s perhaps not surprising that the world of ELT should have produced a collection of such consistently high quality. This is a substantial anthology ... and the reader’s navigation through it is facilitated both by its division into fourteen sections and a guide to the typography of the poems. ...There are poems by teachers and ex-teachers, learners and ex-learners and even learners turned teachers. There are poems written out of the experience of being in some of the most remote, exotic and tedious places in the world. Anyone involved in ELT will find much striking of chords and ringing of bells in these pages. I’d even go far as to suggest that ELT practititoners with no interest in poetry will discover writig here to challenge, entertain and charm them." - Jeremy Page, International House Journal
"There is something for everyone here. Teachers and more advanced students will find plenty of situations to relate to - some comic and some, like the experiences of refugees, more poignant. Some poems draw on confusing English idioms or pronunciation, while others use learner errors as their inspiration. The best explore the relationships between learning and teaching, and between learner and teacher, and the diversity of cultures that mesh into the EFL world. ... the perfect inspiration to encourage creativity in your classroom and an essential addition to the EFL teacher’s bookshelf." - Denise E. Waddingham, British Council Network News
"To my knowledge, the book is unique... The editor has not only pulled together a wonderfully diverse collection of poems..., but he has then organised them into fourteen categories and penned an eminently readable introduction into the bargain. All of human experience is here, as in English language teaching, as all teachers know. - Sab Will, The TEFL Farm
"A quick flick through and I was hooked. Didn’t put it down till I’d read my way right through, several hours later! The children got themselves sandwiches and the dogs and cats starved till midnight... It is the most original, stimulating anthology I have ever read, moving from laughter to sadness. And how it recaptures those moments - of struggling to understand and be understood, of attempting to break through the thorny hedges of cultural differences of tension, humour, heartbreak." - Gabriel Griffin
