Having a poetry tea party is our all-time favourite way to enjoy our tea in the afternoon. We bake together, set the table prettily and make some space for ourselves. We choose favourite poems to share, and we read poetry to each other while enjoying our tea and afternoon snack.
It’s a truly wonderful way to inspire your children to enjoy poetry – or to share poetry with friends that might otherwise remain unshared. In our modern world, we don’t often take the time to read to one another, to share our thoughts in a quiet and genteel way…
We have a deck at the front of our house, and during the summer, we put a carpet out there and screen ourselves off from the world with cloths or with a folding screen. It’s lovely and cool out there until the late afternoon when the sun comes round, and we spend most of our early day out there, studying and playing.
Before we decorate it, it’s really quite bleak and it just shows what you can do with a few cushions and some sarongs! It doesn’t take much to put up and take down for so much pleasure.
Here we are, at a summer poetry tea party sharing our poetry, peach scones and green tea. I can’t believe how much my children have grown since this picture!
At the time of this picture, my children were quite young (9 and 13). In the picture, I see I am reading TS Elliott’s book, Old Possum’s Book of Cats. It’s a lovely whimsical book of poems that was the basis for the hit musical, Cats, back in the 1980s.
We don’t always read poetry. Sometimes we read out loud the bedtime story book that just can’t wait!
Of course, for a poetry tea party, you can choose any different cakes and pastries to share with tea. The emphasis is on the poetry rather than the food.
However, we love to make it special. There’s something intimate and very beautiful about making the space to read to one another whilst sharing different goodies for afternoon tea. It’s become a tradition – one that I hope my children will remember fondly.
~Rebecca
Read more about Rebecca’s teatime on her lovely All About Afternoon Tea Blog (where she shares yummy teatime recipes and more!).
April is also National Poetry Month! Poetry Teatime is a wonderful way to celebrate. And here are 30 more ways from Poets.org.
Image (cc)
