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In my opinion, one of the most brilliant and powerful things about poetry is that it can be a vehicle for children to write in their voice, about their life. As a former primary school teacher, I’m well versed in how much the English education system is still bound by an outdated notion that Standard Spoken English (SSE) is the correct way to speak, regardless of who we are, where we were born, where we grew up and who we grew up with.
Teachers, regardless of their own accent and cultural heritage, are expected to model SSE in the classroom. In my classes in Manchester, I was forever feeling I had to correct verbal and written Mancunian-isms like "can I go toilet?" or "I went town with Mum last weekend" into so-called proper English because of the expectations set. One day a lad in my class who was a pretty shrewd (if awkward) character to deal with stopped me dead in my tracks when he said: "Mr Goodfellow, how come you tell me it’s wrong to say, ‘can I go toilet?’ when my dad says it, and my grandad says it?" And I got it. I got the fact that the way members of a family speaks to each other, the way a person thinks is their cultural heritage. Poetry allows that voice to speak.
I understand the curriculum, and how narrow and joyless the writing curriculum, in particular, has become — and how much pressure teachers are under to get children writing in a certain way in order to satisfy curriculum and assessment targets. This has nothing to do with a teacher’s level of experience. This is to do with an outdated curriculum, which marginalises creativity in writing in favour of a checklist of grammatical conventions and devices that can be learnt by rote in order to create ’good writers’. We may now have a new government, who are prioritising a review of the curriculum, but teachers and SLTs still have their hands tied by the current testing and Ofsted-fearing climate.
I really believe that poetry can put the voices of the community right at the heart of the curriculum
Poetry is different. Nobody can hang age-related expectations on it. In my opinion, poetry is the only area within the current curriculum where teachers can facilitate creativity in a way that allows children the space to write about their own thoughts, feelings and experiences – and to do it, should they choose to, in their own voice. I really believe that poetry can put the voices of the community right at the heart of the curriculum. When writing my verse novel The Final Year, I wanted to represent the accents and dialect I heard growing up in Greater Manchester and also as a teacher in East Manchester. My main character, Nate, and his family and friends’ voices represent this area and I wanted to ensure this came through on the page. So, I made careful choices in the language I chose and used to reflect this. I hope the book is a place where many children can see echoes of their own language, but also that other ways of speaking are equally valid and valuable.
It’s crucial that children, young people and educators are introduced to poets. Because poets can expose children to a range of languages, accents and dialects and show that there are many different ways of speaking and recording spoken language to reflect the language and dialect of the speaker, as a clear way to say: "This is who I am, and this is how I choose to express myself." They need to see and hear poets like Benjamin Zephaniah, Valerie Bloom, Liz Berry, Ian McMillan and Nikita Gill and to read their work on the page to see that language is a crucial part of our identity; and that poetry is not only a place and space to experience a variety of voices, but that they too can write in their voices about the things that matter to them.
Michael Rosen has long talked about poetry being a carrier of culture and a means by which children can establish who they are. Seeing themselves reflected in the voices, languages and identities of practicing poets and being able to put themselves, their language and their lives onto the page in their own writing, in the way Nate does in The Final Year, enables young people to explore parts of themselves; who they are and aspects of their culture that they may not have the chance to do anywhere else in the curriculum. This is why poetry matters.