Teaching Poetry: present issues; future possibilities

In 2021, Manchester Metropolitan University will open the North West’s first public poetry library. The mission of Manchester Poetry Library is to widen access to poetry and to support the creation and performance of new writing at every level from primary school to professional publication.

Manchester Poetry Library

Join us for teaching inspiration to take poetry back to your classroom and give it the place it deserves.

Most English teachers know, understand and appreciate poetry; so this event begins, joyfully, with contributions from two fabulous, contemporary, award-winning poets, Malika Booker and Andrew McMillan.Andrew’s and Malika’s poetry is taught in classrooms; Malika’s collection ‘Pepper Seed’ has recently been put onto the OCR syllabus. Malika and Andrew will be in conversation with Joe Barber: an 11-19 English teacher for 14 years, who currently leads the Secondary English PGCE and the Subject Pedagogy Unit for the PGCE programme at Manchester Metropolitan University. Joe is also a member of the English Association’s Secondary and FE Committee and OCR’s Consultative Form for English Teaching.Malika and Andrew are both senior lecturers in Creative Writing in the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, where they both teach poetry. They will join Joe for a discussion about the tension between the critical skills involved in appreciating and enjoying poetry and those required to teach it well. They will also discuss teachers’ experiences, perceptions and feelings about teaching poetry and its status in the KS3,4&amp;5 curriculum in 2022, especially in the light of a 23% drop in pupils taking A-Level English since 2017, and English Literature not appearing in the list of top10 degree subjects for the first time last year.This is your chance to contribute to the debate, or just to sit back and enjoy listening to an interesting hour of poetry and conversation. Whichever option you choose, you will leave inspired to take poetry back into your own classrooms and give it the place it deserves.S﻿peaker biographiesJoe Barber was an 11-19 English teacher for 14 years and has been a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University since 2015. He currently leads the Secondary English PGCE and the Subject Pedagogy Unit for the PGCE Programme. He is a member of the English Association’s Secondary &amp; FE Committee and OCR’s Consultative Forum for English Teaching. Joe’s on-going doctoral research looks at student English teachers’ knowledge of literary theory and reader-response.Andrew McMillan’s first collection, physical (Jonathan Cape, 2015), was the first poetry collection to win the Guardian First Book Award. It also won a Somerset Maugham Award, an Eric Gregory Award, a Northern Writers’ Award and the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. It saw him shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Polari First Book Prize. In 2019 it was voted as one of the top 25 poetry books of the past 25 years by the Booksellers Association. His second collection, playtime (Jonathan Cape, 2018), won the inaugural Polari Prize.Andrew is a Professor of Contemporary Writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His latest collection is pandemonium, published by Jonathan Cape in 2021. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in French, German, Galician, Norwegian and Slovak translations.Malika Booker’s pamphlet Breadfruit (flippedeye publishing) was recommended by the Poetry Book Society and her debut collection Pepper Seed (Peepal Tree Press) was longlisted for the OCM Bocas prize (2014) and shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre prize for first full collection (2014). It was added to the OCR syllabus in 2022. Malika is published with the poets Sharon Olds and Warsan Shire in The Penguins Modern Poet Series 3: Your Family: Your Body (2017). Her poem Nine Nights was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single poem in 2017. She is the founder of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, a writing collective that has produced award winning poets since 2001.Malika&#x27;s first theatre show Absolution (1999) was commissioned by The Austrian Cultural Institute, Apples and Snakes and Battersea Arts Centre, and had a week’s run at BAC. Her one-woman show UNPLANNED (2007) exploring issues around women’s fertility, cultural and gender identities was produced by Apples and Snakes and toured nationwide. Catwalk (2001), the musical play, commissioned by Nitro ran at the Tricycle Theatre in 2001 and enjoyed a successful UK tour.Malika is currently the recipient of a Research and Development commission to create an R&amp;D of her next play. She was Chair of Judges for The Forward Prize in 2016 and is a fellow of both The Complete Works and Cave Canem as well as inaugural poet in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company (2010). Booker was both a Douglas Caster Cultural Fellow in Creative Writing and LHRI Fellow at Leeds University (2015 - 2017). In 2019 she was commissioned to write and perform a poem about Mars for a BBC Science series about the solar system and was awarded a prestigious Society of Authors Cholmondley Award for her contribution to poetry. She is a Creative Writing lecturer at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, and Chair of Judges for the international Manchester Poetry Prize 2019.

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