These suggestions will help you collect information and ideas and write a variety of poems about faces. Mirrors will be useful! If you're ever stuck you can always refer to the poets' interviews and their suggested poems for inspiration.

• Collecting data will get you thinking about your and other people's faces and what they do and don't tell us about the person.
• Writing face poems 1 adapts some of the suggestions from the Ideas Bank to get you started writing face poems.
• Writing face poems 2 uses the poems recommended by the poets, and their ideas for starting points, to explore different types of poems about faces.

Collecting data

Using the poets' framework

Use the framework provided in the examples for pupils to reflect on their faces and what they mean to them, what they can see in them:

• What feature of your face do you most like? Why?
• What feature of your face do you most dislike? Why?
• Is there a family characteristic in your face/body?

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Close personal study

Using a mirror, list thoughts and ideas for each facial feature, including scars and others marks if appropriate; think about how these make you feel, and about any special connections that these features might have, e.g. to family, or to events in the past:

Focusing in on fine detail

Take one feature (say your eyes) and jot down notes as you go:

1. Look closely. What do you see?
2. Now look closer still. What else do you see – Patterns? New colours? Textures? Reflections?
3. Think hard about your eyes. What memories, emotions, associations, family characteristics do you see?
4. Look again – What do your eyes say to other people? What do they give away about you?
5. Now start to draw back – What about the nearby features that relate to your eyes? Your eyelashes, your eyebrows, your cheekbones, they way your eyes are set in your face?
6. Finally jot down any additional words to do with your eyes.

Use these notes to dip into when you come to write your poem.

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Using Photographs and Paintings

Use an interesting photo of an unknown face, from a magazine, for example, and describe what you see using the approaches above, imagining the feelings and connections that might go with the features – the marks of a life lived!

Or you could use a picture of a famous face, someone you know the story of, and link the features to events in the famous person's life – what have the eyes seen, what have the ears heard, what has the mouth said, what has made the hair curl – or fall out?

You can do the same exercise with paintings, both with unknown faces and with historical or contemporary figures that you know something about.

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Writing face poems 1

Use the thoughts and ideas you have collected to try some of the following, using suggestions from the Ideas Bank.

A variation on 'Sensing'

Use the idea of the family and other connections that go with the face you are describing and work with the model given below to build a picture not only of the face but of the life and events experienced by that face:

In your … ( adjective ) … eyes I see … ( memory or activity or something special )

On your … tongue are the words/syllables/sounds of …

Your … ears are full of the sounds/words/music/memories of …

Your … nose is filled with the scents of …

Your … skin is …

Try to choose interesting vocabulary – use a thesaurus – and try to extend your ideas to more than one or two words.

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Magical metaphor

Try varying the "magical metaphor" approach of the Ideas Bank, to transform your facial features. A metaphor is a sort of poetic lie – it allows you to say that something actually is something else – and when you stop to think about it, the "something else" is usually connected, makes sense, or is a good idea; it gives a new way of seeing the object. So in this version of the game, try to suggest transformations that say something about your personality or your emotions:

My eyes are a bright spring morning and the ripples on a breezy pond;

My ears are hidden caves of dark echoing, lost behind veils of seaweed;

My mouth is a full red wine glass, with a finger dipped and singing on the rim.

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Questions and answers

Try to think of interesting and unusual answers to these fairly mundane questions, perhaps linking to your thoughts, feelings, memories or family connections:

What are my eyes?

The seat of my curiosity, the windows where laughter gets in, the doors to my loving.

What is my nose?

A treasured family landmark, proud rival to a Roman Emperor.

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A variation on 'Unexpected Prepositions'

Now try answering these questions from a different perspective. Take a feature of your face that you would not normally be able to stand beside, that would not normally have an interior, and describe it using an unexpected preposition :

Behind my eyes …

Beyond my eyes …

Beside my eyes …

Within my eyes …

Try to be adventurous and think laterally – this is your chance to make the impossible possible!

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Writing face poems 2

Drawing on the About | Face Poem Suggestions

The poets in About | Face recommend several poem portraits; these could provide starting points for writing.

Faces that are asleep

'The Passenger Opposite' is about watching the sleeping face of a passenger on a train. Elma Mitchell observes that "Everything falls asleep with sleep" and there is an honesty about the face in repose.

Think about what the face is no longer doing once it is asleep as a way into your poem. And how does that affect what an observer might learn about that person or how they might think of them?

Faces that are ill

'Jenny wi' the Mumps' by Sandy Thomas Ross is about a "Face aa heichs and humps." Illness often makes faces change, perhaps even permanently.

Think about how your face is the same but different when ill. And about lasting effects that some illnesses leave.

'The Figure in the Doorway'

This poem by Robert Frost is about catching a glimpse of a figure, a face, as the poet flashes by on a speeding train. The moment is frozen in time, the features telling a brief story. What have you seen as you have sped along by train or car or bus? I once passed a house fire at night, and had to look on helplessly from a 125 as a family stood aghast in their pyjamas, huddled together for comfort in the sparking light, faces pale and haunted. I have wondered about them ever since. If you don't have a memory of your own, you might imagine speeding by a key moment in a story or in history. Try describing the faces of those involved.

Paying tribute

'Maud', 'My Last Duchess', 'To Helen' and 'To a Haggis' all pay tribute to real or imaginary or historical figures. They celebrate their fine attributes and often offer lavish praise. Choose someone famous and celebrate their features and qualities in verse, making links to important events or actions associated with them and their lives. You might want to try the three-stanza, ababb rhyme pattern of 'To Helen' to give a structure to your poem.

The Observer

In 'My Last Duchess' by Robert Browning the poem tells you a lot not only about the subject of the portrait, but also the Duke looking at the portrait, from whose point of view the poem is written. His interpretation of the features of the face is as important as the features themselves.

You might want to write a poem about a face from a specific person's point of view.

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"If you were writing a poem about a face, how would you begin?"

Try writing a poem about a face using the ideas and approaches suggested by the poets:

Maud Sulter

I would find a point of engagement such as the gaze, the line of the neck, or the smile and take it from there.

Edwin Morgan

I saw a face in space…

Stewart Conn

Study its expression and especially the eyes and mouth (think of the mystery of the 'Mona Lisa') with a view to having some entrée into its thoughts and feelings, or as a means of attributing these, imaginatively, to its owner… then setting these in the context, say, of the passage of time.

Valerie Gillies

By looking for its light side and its dark side, the difference between its right eye and its left eye – do they see different worlds?

 

About | Face teaching ideas written by Cathrin Howells, 2007.