Teach This Poem: “The Viole(n)t Cat” by Dan Taulapapa McMullin

Watch the video “Samoa Matalasi” by Lesā Lani Alo & ‪Lesa Lio Tuanai‬.

The following activities and questions are designed to help your students use their noticing skills to move through the poem and develop their thinking skills so they understand its meaning with confidence, using what they’ve noticed as evidence for their interpretations. Read more about the framework upon which these activities are based.

1. Warm-up: Watch the video “Samoa Matalasi” by Lesā Lani Alo & ‪Lesa Lio Tuanai‬. What feelings does this video evoke? Why? What questions do you have?

2. Before Reading the Poem: (Teachers, before class, choose a few paintings by Dan Taulapapa McMullin for a gallery walk.) Carefully view the images in the gallery walk. Which images in particular stand out to you? Why? What do these images make you think about the landscape and/or the people? How does this compare and contrast to the landscape around you?

3. Reading the Poem: Silently read the poem “The Viole(n)t Cat” by Dan Taulapapa McMullin. What do you notice about the poem? Note any words or phrases that stand out to you or any questions you might have. 

4. Listening to the Poem: Enlist two volunteers and listen as the poem is read aloud twice. Write down any additional words and phrases that stand out to you.

5. Small Group Discussion: Share what you noticed about the poem with a small group of students. What imagery in the poem stands out to you? Why? How might your observations be similar to or different from what you noticed about the resources from the beginning of class?

6. Whole Class Discussion: What do you make of the title of the poem and its variations? What does each make you think about? What is the speaker’s relationship to place? What is yours? 

7. Extension for Grades 7-8: Sketch the landscape of this poem. What imagery stands out the most? Why? Create a series of poems or sketches that explore your own relationship to place. 

8. Extension for Grades 9-12: Read other poems that explore the natural world and/or landscapes. Choose a poem and write your own poem inspired by it, thinking again about the landscape around you.

“Within our home islands, there also tend to be fewer publishing opportunities and writing programs encouraging and fostering new writers. So, even though poetry is, by and large, the preferred genre of Pacific Islanders, and I would even venture to say there’s likely at least one poet or orator in every Pacific family, when judged in terms of publishing and distribution within the U.S., it may seem as though we just aren’t writing. This is definitely not the case, but this invisibility persists and is really rooted in American imperialism and colonialism in our region. The violent and ongoing displacement of our peoples, and the silencing and suppression of our languages, life-ways, and systems of governance.” Read the May 2022 Poem-a-Day Interview with Brandy Nālani McDougall.

Voice: an expression denoting the comprehensive style of a speaker adopted by the author in a poem.