Very little from primary school, but at secondary school I remember tripping over various anthologies - especially '9 Modern Poets' which featured a range of poets from Yeats to RS Thomas. My other abiding memory is starting a poetry magazine in the 6th form and the headteacher calling me in as ringleader and threatening to burn it! That made the whole enterprise seem nicely subversive. The following week we staged a lunchtime reading of Hughes 'Crow' with a chorus made up of lads from the school football team. It wasn't until then - the 6th form - that I felt teachers were really taking an interest, but you'll gather from the headteacher's remarks that the culture of the school was somewhat inimical to poetry!

Why do you think poetry in schools matters?

Poetry is a wonderful educational medium, not only for language teaching, but for nurturing awareness of what is is to be alive and curious, excited about the world and our lives in it. There's something inside all of us that turns to poetry at various times in our lives, but people often hide that side of themselves - sometimes even from themselves. Teaching poetry in schools is part of a much wider remit to educate the whole child and not just pick off and treat key-stage attainment targets like symptoms of a disease.

I've heard you talk about poetry and emotional literacy. What do you mean by that phrase? And what are the connections with poetry?

Teaching poetry in schools is not about trying to find exceptional talent or identifying the next generation of poets, though that might happen. It's about connecting up a need in people with a legitimate form of expression within a supportive culture. Children's emotions are not always taken seriously and schools vary enormously in their internal culture. I don't believe that you can nurture technical or cognitive skills without also allowing children to express and identify feelings which might otherwise exist as negative energy. Young people's lives are not easy and many of them are struggling to understand their own responses to what happens to them. The emotional exploration - and discipline - of poetry can bring those feelings within reach, project them into the public domain, and shape them in a positive way.

You've worked on numerous projects in schools, and it must be difficult to pick a favourite. But are there one or two which are particularly memorable?

I think the project I look back to with most fondness is a health awareness project which was staged in Gateshead in 1992. The theme was 'a healthy heart', linking physical and emotional health. I worked with a team of theatre designers and performers who helped me to build various 'poetry machines' and gadgets that had only been wild ideas before. The English department weren't particularly supportive but the kids were great. We gathered their individual responses and built a pantoum, because the rhyme scheme seemed a kind of allegory of circulating blood. The poem became a performance piece where we seated the audience in the middle of the room and four performers circulated the poem around them in the way that the auricles and ventricles of the heart pump blood. For me, it was a breakthrough project that influenced everything I did afterwards in schools.

In your INSET work, what do you see as the most important things you can offer teachers?

A 'nuts and bolts' insight into the way that poetry works, but also confidence in their own skills as teachers. Sometimes teachers back off when a poet comes into their school and forget that they're experts in their own field of education. I try to get teachers involved in the process at every stage so that they can replicate and develop my approaches when I've gone.

What three things would make your poetry work in schools more rewarding?

• Teachers who weren't stretched to breaking point by bureaucracy and the mechanistic demands of the curriculum.
• A recognition that quality is more important than quantity. That education is personal and direct and individual. I get tired of being asked to work with large groups for short periods of time. Education is more than transmission, its about interaction - a focused workshop with 16 children and their teacher can achieve much more than a superficial glossing session with the whole of year 9.
• The presence of a supportive advisory service which returns to a model of good practice that is fast disappearing. The use of experienced teachers as advisory teachers, giving them respite from the classroom and time to reflect and feed ideas back into the system, worked very well in my experience and many of my best projects have resulted from such reflexivity. I've yet to experience Inspectorate involvement that has done anything more than exhaust teachers and impoverish morale.

What are you writing at the moment?

I'm working on a new collection of poems - but then most poets always are! I think it's nearly finished. I'm also steering an idea for a BBC Radio drama - based on my poem-sequence Cuba Libre at the Cafe Espana - through the commissioning process. [press for link to the Poetry Places on-line version of this poem]

Who are your poetic heroes?

It's funny how the early heroes remain. Ted Hughes, Dylan Thomas, Wilfred Owen, RS Thomas and Sylvia Plath were all poets that swept me away into a new sense of what was possible through language. But also the blues - songs by Bill Broonzy, Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy and Chester Burnett - because their language was earthy and direct but still used aspects of poetic metaphor and allegory. So a song by Lightnin' Hopkins about a flood in Louisiana has a biblical feel, a sense of immediacy that also develops an archetypal narrative. A heady mixture!

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Graham Mort

Graham Mort has published six books of poetry and works as a freelance writer and creative writing tutor. A former teacher and director of studies for the Open College of the Arts, he has run many schools-based poetry workshops and has designed numerous combined arts projects and INSET writing courses. His collections include Sky Burial and Circular Breathing, which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. He is one of the poetryclass team of poets - press here for a link to his poetry workshop.

Questions or comments? e-mail: jeansprackland@poetrysociety.org.uk

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