This is how to rescue poetry from shackles of classrooms

Poetry must be returned to life. It must leave the exam paper and re-enter the gathering, the school club, and the community hall. [iStockphoto]

My admonition last week directed at teachers who approach the teaching of poetry mechanically has drawn considerable reaction. Some of it has been sharply critical. I have received messages from teachers who felt I had overreached myself. Some accused me of speaking like a know-it-all, an “ogre” perched above the realities of the classroom. Others, fortunately, have been more reflective. They have acknowledged, with a degree of honesty, that there is indeed a problem in how poetry is being taught across the country.

For me, this is a period of reflection on poetry and its place in our schools and our public life. I have found myself returning again and again to a question that refuses to go away: what exactly are we doing to poetry in our classrooms? And what is poetry doing to our learners in return?