Poetry, teaching and boys

And now ... a change of pace and subject, occasioned by a conversation this morning with my shopping angel. Her son, in the lower reaches of secondary school, has been given homework for English: Write a poem. Poor kid has no clue, no ideas, no inspiration. I won't go into the lamentable state of some education in poetry  - well, not here anyway; suffice to say it is not always well done.

The point is that I remembered the time when I had a class of middle-ability S2 boys who became so enthusiastic about a poem by Edwin Morgan (Off course) that when I suggested they might copy the style and method to create a moment in their own experience, they leapt at it. A week later I had about 25 poems, about incidents ranging from skateboarding accidents to football matches, all neatly handwritten and then typed on the collection of elderly Macintosh 2 computers that I had scavenged for use on the school newspapers. They then huddled round one of their number whom they had chosen as the best to write an accompanying letter, and I sent the whole lot off to the poet in a brown envelope.

Not long after that, two letters arrived at the school for me. One was typed, on beautifully thick paper, to be photocopied and a copy each distributed to the class. The other, handwritten, was to me. Edwin Morgan, the Scottish Makar, one of my favourite poets, had come up trumps again. By this time he was suffering from cancer and knew that he would no longer be able to pay us or any other schools the visits that had enthused a generation, but he was still generous enough to know what a difference encouragement made - to the boys, and to me.

I found both letters today while I was searching in my copy of his Collected Poems for Off course. I'm hoping the photograph may end up the right way up when I upload - it's not looking promising at the moment.

Please don't get a crick in your neck ...