From <i>The Outsiders</i>, Looking In: Using Found Poetry to Explore Genre Conventions in Young Adult Literature

  • Jeff Spanke La Trobe University
  • Rachel Haywood

Abstract

This study recounts how found poetry was used to explore the various genre conventions of Young Adult Literature. While found poetry is often employed as a means of promoting the reflective or reactionary component of the transactional reading process, we discuss how crafting found poems from across several Young Adult texts helped shape the interpretive and analytical element of reader-response in a college English class. By viewing these texts not through a lens of self-, but rather genre-exploration, the material became its own expansive dataset, ripe for a unique qualitative inquiry that ushered in “a new way of conceiving analysis and a new way of seeing”.

Author Biography

Jeff Spanke, La Trobe University
David Beagley is Lecturer in Children's Literature and Literacy at La Trobe University's Bendigo campus, Victoria, Australia, where he teaches units in Genres, History, Australian and Post-colonial children's literature, and in Fiction for Young Adults. He has previously taught English, Literature, History and Drama in secondary schools, and has been a school and university librarian. He is interested in the history of traditional "boys' adventure" stories, especially those involving aircraft.
Published
2018-11-08
Issue
Vol. 21 No. 1 (2018)
Section
The Tortoise's Tale
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