another country before they were ten and been suddenly immersed in English. All of these backgrounds, however difficult, seem to help create poets: perhaps because their experiences have to sit inside the children’s heads a little longer than usual before they can be expressed in words, perhaps because they become just a little more emotionally mature.


These sorts of children, though, do often find it extra difficult to make their writing clear and their poems look good – which is why the Miss Stretchberry treatment of typing them up and presenting them back to the writers beautifully, whether pinned on the board, as she does, or on sheet of paper, or on a blog – is so powerful. Best of all is to print up a class or school anthology in a book, and it’s surprisingly cheap and easy to do this in the age of the online printer. I’ve used a combination of Microsoft Publisher and Mixam Print to create many professional looking books from 75p and £2 a copy.


Miss Stretchberry is also right about her choice of poems: she shows the class sometimes challenging, emotional living


poems by mostly poets. Direct, contemporary voices are the best way to get


a response from young people and there are an amazing array of them available in anthologies and in video form on the internet. Try googling Button Poetry, Chill Pill or the Poetry Foundation, and sit back and enjoy. Browse in your local bookshop or library – you’ll find that poetry is have a resurgence. It’s important that you personally love any poem you share: the group will catch your enthusiasm, or your apathy, infallibly.


The climax of Love that Dog is the visit to Jack’ s school by Walter Dean Myers. Myers himself has sadly died since Love that Dog was published, but we have here in the UK a host of poets just as attractive to young people and with whole programmes of activities to bring to schools and libraries. Pie Corbett, Brian Moses, Joseph Coelho, Rachel Rooney and of course the great Michael Rosen all


regularly visit,


schools,


while The Poetry Society and CLPE will give you lots of free and excellent advice.


And


don’t forget to check out my anthology, England Poems from a School ({Picador, £9.99) a whole book of poems by young migrants, most of them written in the school library using the Miss Stretchberry method.


Love that Dog, Sharon Creech, Bloomsbury, 978-0747557494, £5.99 pbk


England, Poems from a School, edited by Kate Clanchy, Picador, 978- 1509886609, £9.99 pbk


Kate Clanchy is a poet and creative writing teacher, author of Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me and editor of the poetry collection England, Poems from a School. In 2018, she received an MBE for services to poetry.


Share your pupils’ poetry on NATIONAL POETRY DAY #MyNPDPoem


The #MyNPDPoem poetry writing challenge is now open, after being launched by Forward Arts Foundation in association with CLPE at the CLiPPA ceremony.


The challenge encourages schools everywhere to create poems, performances, displays and special books on a grand scale as part of the 25th anniversary of the


UK’s biggest celebration of poetry on National Poetry Day, Thursday October 3rd. Once children have written a poem or poems on the theme of truth, schools or


teachers can then share the best on National Poetry Day by tagging pictures on


Instagram or Twitter with #MyNPDPoem. Schools can hold their own poetry show on National Poetry Day by inviting everyone to perform their poems aloud, and sharing extracts as appropriate with the #MyNPDPoem hashtag.


Go online at www.nationalpoetryday.co.uk to find free resources including a complete


#MyNPDPoem kit including customisable #MyNPDPoem certificates plus video tips from poets Michael Rosen, Rachel Rooney, Joseph Coelho, Victoria Adukwei Bully and Karl Nova.


In poetry, truth. MyNPDPoem BfK ad.indd 1 08/07/2019 11:21


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