ABSTRACT
Children’s attempts at narrative are almost always less successful than their attempts at poems. Unless a teacher sees poetry as a joky, pretty thing (see Pam Ayres’ books, many of the lyrics of the songs that children are bullied into singing in assembly, and the rhymes in greetings cards); unless a teacher sees poetry as a decoration on the edge of life, rather than an exploration of the centre of it; unless all this, the writing of poems demands freshness. It bans cliché. See, especially, those oxymorons in Chapter 7. It insists on learning, pushing boundaries outwards. Make it new, as Ezra Pound told us.
