What does it mean to ‘capture’ an animal in poetry? By using the work of Ted Hughes, Dr. Jessica De Waal explores the ways in which students can be empowered to create their own vivid descriptions that powerfully evoke the natural world

 A lifelong fascination:

 The poetry of Ted Hughes has been a lifelong fascination for me. I have never been able to shake off the primal and often very moving evocations of animals he presented in his work since I first encountered his poetry as a teenager. Although I didn’t know it then, these first readings would lead to a fascination with his writing that has taken me through undergraduate and postgraduate study, culminating in a PhD thesis in the last few years exploring the environmental emergency and the ‘greening’ of Hughes’s writing for children.

 As far back as 1967, Hughes wrote a collection of programmes and an accompanying book entitled Poetry in the Making as part of the BBC Schools Broadcasting Department series, Listening and Writing. Hughes had hoped that his practical suggestions for creative writing could be used — much as they were in the BBC broadcasts — ‘as a text and anthology for the class, or as a general handbook for the teacher.’ Despite being written almost 60 years ago, the material is relevant and appropriate for today’s classroom use.

‘Imagine what you are writing about… you will have captured a spirit, a creature.’ Ted Hughes.

Ted Hughes was passionate about instilling poetic creativity for the next generation. He noted: ‘The life within words, the anatomy of sentences, and the music of narration and argument, can be taught, and must be taught.’ Believing strongly in the value of education, Hughes felt that the natural world could be accessed on a literary level by all children — if guided well by teachers in schools. Hughes devised exercises in contemplation for children by using the mind’s eye and imagination to become immersed in the creative process. Through carefully guided teacher questioning and input, children can take ownership of the creative process which brings to life important and powerful poetry created by them. By considering the reading and reacting activities, as well as their own perspectives, children not only develop their methodical approach to creative writing, but also develop their awareness and appreciation for the natural and non-human world.

In the classroom — teacher led input:

 A shared approach, when introducing a new reading, should include the teacher bringing the students into the imaginative territory of the text. Reading together and leading discussion is usually the most effective way to instil creativity and encourage individual responses. It also provides students with opportunities to talk in pairs, find examples within the text and to think about deeper layers of meaning.

 The teacher might discuss with the class the meaning of the dictionary definition of ‘capture’ — ‘to take someone as a prisoner, or to take something into your possession by force.’ How might this relate to an animal? (The notion of ‘capture’ can often have negative connotations).

 It is important, of course, to follow this up by drawing on the idea of Hughes’s notion of ‘capture.’ What might the word mean? What connotations might it have? Students might respond with a variety of ideas: the notion of artistic ‘capture’, or to have our imaginations or hearts captured.

 To help prepare the students to encounter a poem, it is often a good idea to share images or other stimuli to generate discussion. Before we read Hughes’s poem ‘The Jaguar’, there could be historical images of zoos shown to contextualise the poem to follow. Ask the students: what are your first impressions? The giraffes seem almost too big for the enclosure and are dominant in the picture. The elephant is depicted almost as performative, evoking animals in the circus whose role is entirely dependent on entertaining humans. The lion and lioness look depressed and incarcerated, the bars and the concrete floors of their enclosure looming over them.

The children could be asked to talk in pairs about their perceptions of the images, the enclosures and the animals and generate some words through brainstorming or writing on sticky notes.

 Reading and reacting:

Show students this picture of a jaguar. Do they think it is wild or captured? How do they know? We might assume the jaguar in the picture is free and in the wild. But, on closer inspection, when we know more about how the image has been taken and framed, we can see that despite our first assumptions, the jaguar appears to be behind a cage, as the bottom right of the image suggests. There is potential here for a discussion of what freedom can look like and whether it can be illusory in some circumstances. The focus of the next part of the lesson is a close reading of ‘The Jaguar’ taken from Hughes’s early collection The Hawk in The Rain (1957). It would be great for the teacher to be able to model the process of reading the poem aloud but also for the students to be given the opportunity to read it for themselves, as they will invariably find different elements of the poem to enjoy and words they will find interesting or intriguing.

After the reading, there could be a whole class discussion which would focus on how the poem made the students feel, what they think it is about, and some of the vibrant and sensory images Hughes has used to describe the animals. In terms of guiding this discussion, various words and phrases could be selected and projected: for instance, why has Hughes used the word ‘shriek’ to describe the parrots? What impressions might this word give? Why has Hughes described the parrots as ‘if they were on fire’? Why does ‘cage after cage seem… empty’?

There is some challenging vocabulary that will likely need further explanation. What might ‘fatigued with indolence’ mean? The idea, of course, is to explore the animals’ inertia — and the sense that captivity has somehow rendered them incapable, their behaviour constrained and at odds with what we might expect.

The metaphor ‘the boa constrictor’s coil is a fossil…’ is interesting, and it would be good to show the students a picture of an ammonite, perhaps alongside a picture of a snake’s tail coiled. But why has Hughes made this comparison? What do we think of when we consider a ‘fossil’? Something etched in time, immovable and itself captured by rock and the passage of millennia. Why might a boa constrictor be the snake Hughes has chosen to focus on? They are notoriously hard to capture, they are themselves usually virile, strong and predatory. The ‘fossil’ image somehow suggests it is dead, no longer fulfilling the life and freedom it had in the wild.

The poem shifts in the third stanza to a crowd ‘mesmerized’ by a ‘jaguar hurrying enraged…’. The stare of the crowd emphasises the notion of captivity and our relationship to the animals themselves.

It would be very productive to ask students to find images or vocabulary that evoke the notion of captivity and then to ask for feedback. During this feedback, explore the connotations of the words and phrases they select: ‘cage’, ‘prison’, ‘bars’ and ‘cell’. This can then lead to asking the students about alternative ways in which animals can be captured.

‘You will read back through what you have written, and you will get a shock. You will have captured a spirit, a creature.’ Ted Hughes. Share this quotation from Hughes with the students, to explore the notion that ‘capturing’ an animal can be done artistically and creatively. We do not have to ‘capture’ an animal and place it in captivity to let humans have a profound encounter with it: we can ‘capture’ it through art, sculpture or by the power of words.

Reacting and responding:

 At the start of the second part of the sequence — envisaged as a follow up lesson — it would be good to recap the poem and the themes of captivity and capture from the previous lesson.

Brainstorming a list of animals that might be found in captivity — and in the wild — could be a productive way to encourage the students to share stories of their own favourite animals. Some students, of course, may have less prior knowledge or experiences. The screening of documentary footage of animals (there are many excellent examples online) could be used to ask students to consider some important questions: how do the animals move? What do the animals remind them of? What sort of habitat do the animals live in? How do they interact with each other?

‘See it and live it… just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words will look after themselves, like magic…’ Ted Hughes.

 This quotation from Hughes could be shown to the students, so they understand his invitation to use their imagination and senses to ‘capture’ an animal using the power of words.

 To begin, guide the students through a sensory imagination journey. Ask them to close their eyes and picture their chosen animal standing directly in front of them. Encourage them to think carefully about what they can hear — the sounds the animal makes, as well as any background noises from its environment. Prompt them to notice the smells: the scent of the animal itself, the earthy, musky or fresh smells that surround it. Invite them to imagine the feeling of the animal’s body — whether its coat would be rough, silky, bristly or leathery. Help them to focus also on what they can see: the animal’s colours, the way it moves, the details of its body.

 Before asking the students to work independently, it is important to model the process for them. Choose an animal yourself and think aloud as you describe it. Talk about its appearance, the noises it makes, the way it smells, and the imagined feel of its body. As you do this, invite the class to help you by suggesting words, phrases and sensory details, building a rich bank of descriptive language together. Record these ideas visibly so that all students can refer to them.

 Once the children have seen this model, they can begin to generate their own ideas. Students can stick a picture of their chosen animal into their books, or, if they prefer, sketch it themselves. Around the image, they will write their sensory observations and descriptive words. As they work, move around the classroom, offering prompts and questions to help them deepen and enrich their descriptions.

 After the idea generation, model the process of using these words and images to craft a piece of writing. Live modelling is essential here: show the students how to select ideas, how to build lines and phrases, and how to change and improve their writing as they go. Think aloud about your choices, demonstrating that writing is not about getting it perfect the first time, but about drafting, experimenting, and refining.

With the model complete, the children then move into writing their own stanzas, using the words and images they gathered earlier. Continue to circulate, supporting individual students by suggesting phrasing, encouraging them to be bold in their imagery, and helping them to edit and improve where necessary.

To help all of the students succeed, it may be useful to provide a bank of animal ideas for inspiration, particularly selecting animals that naturally lend themselves to vivid description, such as a jaguar, an eagle, an elephant or a snake. Word banks, sensory prompts or sentence starters could be offered as adapted strategies for those who need additional support.

Final thoughts for teachers…

 The ‘capturing animals’ task can equally be applied to a wider variety of given stimuli, in particular, the destruction of the natural world and the ‘captured’ planet at the hands of human interference. This is both an important and necessary foundation for deepening environmental understanding and educating students in the current issues that the world is facing.

 As Hughes so fittingly wrote:

‘Children’s sensibility, and children’s writing, have much to teach adults. Something in the way of a corrective, a reminder… it is also still very much the naked process of apprehension, far less conditioned than ours far more fluid and alert, far closer to the real laws of its real nature.’

Further reading:

Ted Hughes, Poetry in the Making (London: Faber and Faber, 1967).

Ted Hughes, Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose, ed. William Scammell (London: Faber and Faber, 1994).