By Victor Ochieng’
vochieng.90@gmail.com
Poetry is an ambit of English taught in Kenyan secondary schools. English exams at Form Three and Four levels, is presented in three papers. Poetry is tested in English Papers One and Two. When tested in Paper One, the examiner expects conscious candidates to be home and dry in oral skills. When poetry comes in English Paper Two, learners are expected to be hunky-dory in literary skills.
In KCSE, the poem tested in Paper One, oral skills section is not subject to winds and whims of examination trends. It can be tested any year. Unlike the literary or comprehension poem tested in paper two which alternates with folktales as can be seen in KCSE 2016-2020. Again, when poetry is tested in English Paper One, based on the Table of Specification, there are a-must-come-areas, which form the central plank of this piece.
• Knowledge of Sound Patterns
Sound patterns include: rhyme, alliteration, consonance, assonance, sibilance, onomatopoeia, ideophone and parallelism. Sibilance is the repetition of the hissing sounds in poetry. Like Susan and Stacy sang a song on Saturday /s/. A behemoth book titled the Joy of Poetry by KLB posits that parallelism takes the call-and-response structure or antiphony as seen in songs. A classic case is the Sermon on the Mount recorded in Matthew 5:7-9. Sometimes, students confuse onomatopoeia with ideophone. Onomatopoeia are English words that describe sounds. For instance, chirping of birds. ‘Chirping’ is the onomatopoeia. While an ideophone is a non-English word that describes sounds. For instance, birds chirped kech kawa kech kawa. The words in italics that are not part of the English lexicon are the ideophones.
Candidates should be in a position to point out the sound devices supported with illustrious illustrations. They should also be able to point out the effectiveness of these sound devices. Of course, it is clear like crystal. Sound devices enhance: rhythm, musicality and memorability. They also create the intended mood and make the piece interesting.
There are two points to note. One, apart from the use of sound devices, the poet is also licenced to achieve rhythm through wise use of words that depict movement. Two, it is erroneous to cite repetition as a sound device.
• Knowledge of rhyme scheme
Rhyme and rhythm conflate to form prosody; the study of rules that govern ways in which patterns of sound and beats are arranged in a poem. Prosody focuses on three thrilling things in poetic parlance: organisation of lines and stanzas, metre and rhyme.
According to Malimo J. Shabaya and James M. Kanuri, in their well-researched book titled Demystifying Poetry, rhyme is defined as repetition of similar or identical sounds from word to word or line to line. In Poetry Simplified: A Guide to Oral and Literary Skills, Mungai J. M. postulate: Rhyme is the placement of similar sounding words at the end of lines in a poem or the similarity of sounds from the last stressed syllable in otherwise different words. There are three types of rhyme that take preponderance in poetry: end-rhyme, internal rhyme and slant or half rhyme. End-rhyme is noticeable when words that rhyme are placed at the end of different lines in a poem. Internal rhyme takes pre-eminence when words that rhyme are placed within a line rather than at the end of lines. Slant or half rhyme occurs when words sound similar, but not exact per se. Like in the words prove and love. As well as moan and groan.
When rhyming words feature at the terminal part of the lines, we can identify rhyming pair of words, and derive the rhyme scheme. A rhyme scheme is a pattern of end-rhymes in a poem expressed by labelling each sound with a small letter of the alphabet – starting with letter ‘a’. Lines with the same end-rhymes are given the same letters, the first rhyme (sound) the letter ‘a’, the second rhyme letter ‘b’. It wends that way. If the rhyme scheme is regular, it means the pattern can be predictable.
For instance, a rhyme scheme can be abab cdcd. We separate the rhyme schemes of the two stanza by just leaving some modicum space. We should not append any punctuation mark. The rhyme scheme of this poem is regular because we can predict the pattern. If it is abab cdcd, it means the next pattern will be efef ghgh. Moreover, the rhyming pair of words welded well in a poem can be like snakes and wakes.
• Knowledge of paralinguistic features
Knowledge of paralinguistic features – verbal and non-verbal cues – help students respond to questions focusing on how to say or perform particular lines. Verbal cues cascades to features evinced using the mouth such as tonal variation or cadence, stress, pitch, volume and tempo. Non-verbal cues on the other hand, puts puissance on the use of body language like body movement, facial expression, eye contact, posture, poise, gestures, dramatisation or mime, use of props, and general grooming or use of costumes. When candidates are asked how to say a particular line, they simply focus on verbal cues. But when asked on how they would perform a particular line, they should capture both verbal and non-verbal cues. This explains why more marks are appended to questions that test performance.
• Knowledge of words to stress
Stress refers to emphasis given to words. In poetry, stress is seen when some words in a line or verse are pronounced with more force than others. The extra force is stress. There are three types of stress – syllabic stress, word stress and sentence stress. Candidate should know the words that are stressed in a particular line and leg it up with reasons. Of course, we stress content words – which include nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs. We do not stress functional words like prepositions, personal pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, quantifiers and articles.
The writer is the co-author of Nuts and Bolts of Secondary Poetry.
