The importance of performance poetry pedagogy in the Grade 11 English FAL classroom: What is lost in its absence?

Abstract

This article spotlights the interconnection between poetry as performance arts and adolescents’ identity as performance. It does this through an analysis of four lesson observations conducted in a Grade 11 English First Additional Language (FAL) classroom in a black township school in Gauteng province, South Africa. The analysis aimed to assess what was lost when a teacher failed to apply a performance poetry pedagogy in the English FAL poetry classroom. Using Erikson’s work on adolescent identity development as a theoretical framework and drawing insights from existing literature on poetry as a performance art, the article demonstrates that a non-performance poetry pedagogy kills the dialogic quality of poetry, inhibits the political expressiveness of poetry, nullifies the enjoyment of poetry in the classroom, and provokes learner resistance. These findings point to a need to transform poetry education in South African schools by making the performance arts an integral part of teaching English FAL.