Friday Poem

Environmental & Science Education
Poetry
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler

Today's poem is by Tony Hoagland.

I add a thoughtful essay about children's poetry by Imogen Russell Williams that I've long intended to include.  She writes about the narrowing of education in an examination based system, referring to the "GCSE behemoth" grinding "over the horizon," which often has the effect for many students "that poetry exists for one purpose alone: to be broken down into techniques and terminology for the optimal acquisition of marks."

The GCSE is the acronym for the General Certificate of Secondary Education, a set of examinations taken by students aged 15-16 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The poems Williams discusses put paid to the analytic, not that analysis is unimportant but the joy or poetry and nourishment poetry provides are not to be lost. To give you a taste of her aim in this essay about liking poetry, she includes a few lines from Roger McGough's Apostrophe.

'twould be nice to be
an apostrophe
floating
above an s
hovering
like a paper kite
in between the its ... 

There is more and you may read her comments here.