Towards Lifeworlds: Poetry as sound in school curricula

Poetry has a place in literature and language arts curricula across the world, but articulation of the conception of poetry underpinning curricular detail is rarely overt. Usually it can at best be inferred only from the organisational structure of a curriculum, its categories, headings and content. Existing structures suggest a view of poetry that readily assumes its association with printed text and the written word, though the possibility that poetry may just as much be a medium of sound, heard and uttered aloud, is relatively unelaborated. This paper attempts to articulate a rationale to underpin recognition in curricular detail of poetry’s existence in sound as well as in print. In doing so it must attend to the aesthetic character of poetry, its very nature.