Thoughts about teaching, literature, and teaching literature
After recently finishing Jennifer Webb's superb How to Teach English Literature: Overcoming Cultural Poverty, I started to think about what she calls 'juicy' quotations. These are those images or quotations in a text that almost demand detailed linguistic and thematic analysis. They are those quotations that if successfully grappled with will yield countless interesting things... Continue Reading →
I recently listened to a superb episode of the BBC's In Our Time, which discussed the American poet Emily Dickinson. I was struck, as I often am when listening to the show, by the richness of its discussion and the rigour and precision with which the guests explored the various topics. For those who may... Continue Reading →
This poem is from the 1993 collection Book of Matches so titled because each poem is supposed to be read in twenty seconds, the time it takes for a match to burn. This is significant for this particular poem since the collection deals with time passing (hence the match image) as does ‘Mother, any distance’.... Continue Reading →
One of my favourite (if not the favourite) poems in the GCSE Love and Relationships AQA Anthology, Seamus Heaney's 'Follower' is a wonderful poem. Stylistically complex and emotionally rich in equal measure, the below represents a detailed analysis of the poem. I've used it in the past as part of a strategy of flipped teaching... Continue Reading →
If you enjoy this blog post, then you'll love my new book Experiencing English Literature. With dedicated chapters on teaching novels, plays and poetry as well as teaching generative writing, sentence-stems and essay structure, it is filled with actionable strategies ready for the classroom. You can order it right now HERE ! There are many,... Continue Reading →
Having recently re-read An Inspector Calls, I was struck by just how relevant the play still is, not only in terms of what it says about class and civic responsibility, but also gender, especially in light of the Me Too movement. I thought I would try to capture and distil what I take to be... Continue Reading →
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