What is the future of poetry? | Books | The Guardian

What is the future of poetry? | Books | The Guardian
The Poetry Society's Palmer says the open-ended nature of poetry worries many readers, and the effect can be most insidious with teachers. "Poetry has not been taught well in schools for a long time," she says. "Because of the national curriculum, teachers have not been allowed to try things out freely. So instead of looking at a poem and saying 'Don't you like these words?', or 'Doesn't it make you think interesting thoughts?', they are saying to students 'Where is the adjective and the adverb here?' Knowledge of poets is shockingly low among primary school teachers, and because people are now teaching who were themselves taught under the national curriculum, they are scared of poetry. They look at a poem and ask, 'Is this right?', as if it's a puzzle you can unravel, but poetry is ambiguous and multi-layered. Poems will mean different things to us at different times in our lives."