The Free Internet Cafe for the Blind & Visually Impaired, the first in the whole of Africa, which opens the World Wide Web, making The Gambia a leading light in Africa, with this technology by allowing free and total access to surf the net send and receive emails and for students to enhace their studies with the aid of this pioneering software. No more do they need to rely on a third party to read to them newspapers, magazines, books, letters and world wide information. Nonvision.KingfisherGambia.com - Poetry Archive (expert)
 

Poetry Archive

Poetry Archive website (opens in new window )

Level: expert

What is Poetry Archive?

As the title suggests, poetry archive is a vast online collection of poems.

Using the site

The best thing to do here is focus on searching and playing poems.

By clicking on poets or poems on the homepage you can then search.

There is a heading for each type of search, poets name, poem name or poems by theme (animals, music etc). You can also browse by form (ballad, couplet, etc).

For name and poem, you are presented, under the heading, with the alphabet. Click the letter you desire, i.e L if you wish to find poems by Laurie Lee (under the poets heading, of course).

The next page has a similar layout- a heading for the results then arrow down to find the author (in this case) that you require. It’s worth noting that the search for poets focuses on last name, so L for Lee and not Laurie.

You will then be presented with information on the poet, and the choice of poems available to listen too.

Following our Laurie Lee search, we’ll select "apples".

To hear this poem, click the "read now" link.

This is where navigation becomes a little tricky – but by no means impossible.

The best way to get results is as follows:

Once you’ve opened a page with a poem on, find the first heading which will say something like "copyright".

From here, arrow up. Alternatively, find the word open, which should locate the link "open player in a new window" and arrow down.

Here you will see "flash movie start" by arrowing down you can read the text of the poem.

The only way to play is by clicking the "open player in a new window" link. This works fine, however you’ll need to make sure you have something like realPlayer installed on your computer.

Navigation

This website can appear a little tricky and odd, especially when trying to play poems. The find function is very useful on this site, and headings work well to locate lists of authors, poems, etc. For the beginner, however, it’s probably recommendable to simply arrow through until you grasp this site

 

The Free Internet Cafe for the Blind & Visually Impaired, the first in the whole of Africa, which opens the World Wide Web, making The Gambia a leading light in Africa, with this technology by allowing free and total access to surf the net send and receive emails and for students to enhace their studies with the aid of this pioneering software. No more do they need to rely on a third party to read to them newspapers, magazines, books, letters and world wide information.