Re/turning the world into poetry [an alternative education portfolio]

This chapter comprises a portfolio of poems crafted regarding alternative education. Alternative education providers, like Creative Learning Scheme, were established during the 1990s as community responses to increasing numbers of young people “alienated” from mainstream schools. These providers offered a type of learning refuge for students, denoted by a holistic approach to students and curriculum, imbued with the ethic of care and love and sustained through poetic utterances. The portfolio of poems reveals the poetic language of tutors and transforms one government document into poetry. Ministry of Education documents regarding alternative education, rehearsed the enduring youth “at-risk” narrative; a deficit model that locates “risk” factors within the individual (e.g. drug and alcohol addiction, gang affiliation, transient living conditions, criminal behaviour) with little consideration for the wider social and economic macro-narratives that have undoubtedly influenced young people's lived realities.