Look at Exploration of the Soul’s “Postscript”. Emin is told she cannot go to a girl’s birthday party because she does not have an invitation. Emin cries herself to sleep and then asks her mother: “What’s an invitation?”
Pupils then answer the following:
* Have they been rejected or rejected anyone?
* If rejection was a colour what colour would it be?
* If rejection was a person, season, temperature, time of day, taste what would it be?
* Use the answers to construct a poem. Stress that we feel sympathy for the girl in Emin’s poem and that pupils should try to achieve this with their poems. Do the lesson before break so they can talk to you afterwards about the issues raised.
Jenny Benson is an English teacher at Hartsdown Technology College, Margate
