Schools are facing considerable barriers to teaching poetry in the classroom. That’s according to a new survey from the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education and Macmillan Children’s Books – the findings of which come as little surprise to me.
I have worked with many student teachers and spoken at many teacher conferences where it’s clear that it is often a struggle to fit poetry into the classroom day. What a shame that is. We all instinctively know the power of poetry – it is the medium we turn to at weddings and funerals and new births, we know that it speaks to something deep within us and yet, on the whole, poetry tends to get forgotten until those times when we need it, and nothing else will do.
