There is one topic this month that will not be looking forward to the year ahead. Poetry, that free spirit, will be subjected to its usual dissection under the statutory requirements laid down by the Department for Education concerning the national curriculum for English Language. This subjection is all the more disappointing because at primary level, the teaching of poetry begins sympathetically in the reading and comprehension section of the curriculum with its instruction that pupils should be taught “to appreciate rhyme and poems and to recite some by heart”. This encouraging start is repeated in year 2, with pupils “listening to, discussing and expressing views about a wide range of contemporary and classic poetry…continuing to build up a repertoire of poems learnt by heart…reciting some”. Hopefully, pupils will have already been introduced to the sound of poetry through nursery rhymes, a process that no one has described better than Dylan Thomas. He said he wanted to write poetry in the beginning because he had “fallen in love with words” and that “what mattered was the sound of them…the shape and shade and size and noise of the words as they hummed, strummed, jigged and galloped along”. Leaving aside the observation that the enjoyment of hearing and reciting poetry is more important at this early age than too much discussion, a real problem starts to appear in year 2. Didactic approach Here, the curriculum has an increasingly didactic approach that encourages the development of “positive attitudes and stamina for writing”, by amongst other suggestions, “writing poetry”. But the curriculum does not prescribe exact exercises, leaving this to schools and teachers, many of whom do not feel confident enough to teach the writing of poetry, and who rely on help from outside bodies and well-known literary figures. Most of these prompts or tips suggest a subject and then invite pupils to write about it. For example, they may be asked to write a poem about bogs using alliteration, repetition and onomatopoeia. More detailed advice offers lesson plans, to include activities such as writing in different forms (sonnets, haikus, free verse), while some of the suggestions are no more than gimmicks. For example, the reproduction of typed pages with words and sentences crossed out with the words left visible offered as poetry. What is clear is that from year 2 onwards, writing poetry appears as a distinct part of the writing curriculum in promoting literacy. Comments from the influential 2007 Ofsted report Poetry in Schools are still as relevant today as when they were first mentioned. Over-use of tasks The report was particularly concerned with the over-use of tasks, such as “list all the words that rhyme” or “can you find an example of a simile, metaphor, personification and onomatopoeia”. It went on to say that all of this meant “pupils’ enjoyment diminishes and poetry becomes a chore rather than a pleasure”, a comment Philip Larkin would have approved of. He said in his 1982 Paris Review interview, “first and foremost, writing poems should be a pleasure”. The Ofsted report also criticised teaching pupils to imitate particular forms of poetry (for example the haiku), as such an approach “becomes primarily a teaching tool for language development, rather than a medium for exploring experience”. This didactic approach to writing poetry was commented on by James Fenton in his 2002 book An Introduction to English Poetry, in which he said that you “can construct a demonstration model…but if we have to excuse it from having any meaning or any artistic value, it becomes a worthless model for use as poets”. In view of the doubts voiced by many teachers as to their ability to teach the writing of poetry and their reliance on various prompts, it would seem sensible to remove the requirement for teaching pupils how to write poetry and concentrate on reading, learning and reciting poetry. Poetry by Heart The success of the Poetry by Heart competition, started in 2013, which has involved more than 200,000 pupils to date, would confirm the popularity and sense of such an approach. Salman Rushdie also told the Hay Festival in 2016 that “memorising works of literature is a simple exercise that enriches the way you enjoy poems and enriches your relationship with language…and stays with you forever”. Further encouragement for concentrating on the aural aspect of poetry comes from The Poetry Archive, with its proclamation that “poetry is best enjoyed and taught by learning it out aloud”. This is not to say that writing poetry should be discouraged. If a pupil wants to write a poem, then having hopefully absorbed a feel for poetry through reading, hearing and reciting it, he or she can do so without feeling that they have to follow a didactic format. As Robert Frost so memorably stated, “poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words”.