THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH POETRY TO TURKISH STUDENTS

Today, teaching poetry to any group of young people would present problems at the start, for the very simple now common place reason that we live in an age In which there is little interest in or place for poetry. Unfortunately, our over-populated and over-mechanised societies are nojangtr favourable settings for the encouragement or advancement of poetry. This changed milieu has naturally affected me literary taste of the generations born into It. Young people In the modem world are largely conditioned by nass-metlia which has reawakened, in the words of David Lodge, the "oratauraJ culture"1, they are also conditioned by comics and bestsellers industries, horror movies, beat music and every other industry which wants to sell its products to the young. Yet, at the same time, they are exposed to an incredible amount of experience artd general information inaocesibte to most of us when we were at their age; from space travel to drugs, violence and to the revolution in sex. Thus our students naturally develop sharper sensibilities and wider interests, especially outside the classroom, and a strong and rather admirable resistance to pedantic teaching.