Sparking Young (and Older) Writers' Minds Using Abantu

What is Abantu?

Years ago during a summer writing workshop at Centrum Foundation in Port Townsend, WA, poet Robert Hass (who went on to serve as a recent U.S. Poet Laureate) taught students a short couplet form that he had read was an oral tradition among the Abantu people of Africa. In class, he recited this couplet:

The sound of an elephant's tusk cracking
The voice of an angry man

He told us that the couplet was an example of the oral poetry that Abantu tribes people created as they worked. One person would offer an image and another would then, as the rhythm of the work allowed, offer an image in response. The participants were creating something like similes (the sound of an elephant's tusk cracking is like the voice of an angry man) and seizing the opportunity to use figurative language and move through the world of the senses by association.

Whether you imagine that the elephant's tusk breaks as a consequence of the animal knocking into a tree or that the cracking is the noise the tusk causes when the elephant uses it to fell a tree, the sound has a tangible meaning when compared to the voice of an angry man. Of course, the description is more tangible to those who have heard the cracking first-hand, but this reminds us of the particular and often local quality of images. It is just this particularity that makes images so important in effective writing, and working in the abantu form will certainly facilitate young writers’ trust in the power of images.

Teaching Abantu to Foster the Use of Images in Writing

Whether you are working with one child or a group of children, propose a first line for an abantu using a common image that appeals to the five senses. You can state the image in different ways to appeal to more than one sense:

Clothes fresh from the dryer

Clothes tumbling in the dryer

Clothes going into the dryer

Next ask the kids (and any adults who may be with them including yourself) to "answer back" to these lines with an image that makes them experience the same physical sensation they get from hearing the first line:

Clothes fresh from the dryer
The patch of carpet where my cat lies in sunshine

Clothes tumbling in the dryer
Leaves and paper blown by the wind

Clothes going into the dryer
Seaweed lying on the beach

Next ask everyone in the group to contribute first lines for more abantu by offering images from their day:

The cornflakes in my bowl

Waiting for the school bus

Kids eating in the cafeteria

Sitting at my desk

The lights in the ceiling

Lockers along the hallway

Suggest that each person respond to the given list of lines, orally or in writing. Here are some sample responses to the lines above:

The cornflakes in my bowl
Sand bars in a bay

Waiting for the school bus
A jellybean out of the bag

Kids eating in the cafeteria
Undulating kelp

Sitting at my desk
Piloting a space craft

The lights in the ceiling
Egg cartons in the supermarket

Lockers along the hallway
An army waiting

If most of the images turn out to be visual in content (which most often happens at first) encourage the kids to put sound or smell into their work instead of relying totally on visual images and likenesses:

My mother's voice
Water in a fountain

My baby brother's voice
Siren's behind our car

The star jasmine at night
Powder on a baby

Bubble gum out of the wrapper
The plastic skin of a new Barbie doll

Taste may be harder:

A cracker with no butter
Brown paper bag in my mouth

The rubber bands on my braces
Tofu

Sometimes the sense of touch needs developing and you can direct attention to doing this by asking for first lines that are about textures:

My wool hat on my head

Blades of dry grass

Touching the skin of a dolphin

The smooth part of the peel under an eggshell

The rough skin of an orange

Stucco on a building

Developing facility with this kind of association will help kids as well as the adults who write with them reclaim an innate way of looking at, touching, smelling, tasting and listening to the world. It will keep the cogs of the writing mind oiled and ready to go.

Extending the Lesson

After spending time developing children's talent with abantu, encourage them to insert abantu into their prose when they are writing description:

When I woke up this morning, I went downstairs for breakfast. My mother had put cornflakes in a bowl for me and I poured milk over the brown flakes. They peeked out of the milk, sand bars in the bay where my father took me fishing.

Not only can we see what this writer is doing and facing, he or she may have a beginning to a really good story about going fishing!

Keep The Exericise Going

Make this abantu exercise a continuous game. Kids, teachers and family members can take turns being the source of first lines and await their students', classmates' or family members' response lines. The medium for the game can be a corner of a classroom black or white board or slips of paper stuffed into a suggestion box that the children in charge of open to gather the abantu and share with others. Kids can also do abantu by email with grandparents or families can create the couplets as a car game. Some families might want to keep a journal for recording the abantu or perhaps post the couplets on their refrigerators.

No matter which way you keep the game of writing abantu going, valuing associational thinking will definitely encourage good writing and the spirit of play essential in its creation.