You’ll have an assignment where you’re asked to select a poem of at least 15 lines written by a Canadian poet of an appropriate difficulty level for Grade 12. You’ll prepare/practice your oral presentation of the poem and record it, combine that audio with image files using a multimedia program, like iMovie, and publish a polished multimedia project as a final product.

Here is my advice on constructing your poetry media project: focus on Layering, Leveling, and Staggering your media pieces.

Here are student samples of this project, shared with their permission:

This student really played with the technology options, by even using a voice modifier to make the narration in the poem sound like it was spoken by someone else.

This student developed a nearly flawless multimedia project, using a collection of videos, sound effects, and background music to really accentuate the tension within the poem he chose. It’s an excellent representation of what your project should be as a finished product.

This project includes a great example of well-selected visual images (both photos and video clips) along with music to accurately portray the tone developed by the poem.

1. Listening to Samples of Spoken Poetry: To help you get in the mindset of what proper speaking of poetry sounds like, there are resources collected here to support you.

    

   • • In particular, you can listen to the very last poem spoken by actor Anthony Hopkins. Another is a Shakespeare sonnet spoken by the voice of “Darth Vader”, James Earl Jones.

   Video Reviewing Poetry Speaking: This resource reviews five specific things to consider when preparing to speak poetry orally.
   

2. Here’s a copy of my poetry narration: this one is an example of the A10 Assignment that didn’t require video or images. I enjoyed finding the right sound effects and music in the background.
3. Selecting a Canadian Poem:
   1. I’ve assembled dozens of poem options and wrote on each page a quick summary of what the poem is about. It could be easy to pick from this pdf collection (a) or this second pdf collection (b).
   2. There are hundreds of poems to select from on this resource page. 
   3. There are also Canadian poetry anthologies (poetry collections) in books in the classroom to flip through.

Starting Your Poetry Project:

• Instructional Video – reviews the characteristics of multimedia, the tools to consider using in video making, and some of the steps to begin.