Poetry should always be a pleasure, never a chore

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”.