I have been a teacher of English for 24 years, a Headteacher for 9 years and, at the age of 48, this much I know about why we all need nourishment in challenging times. We all need to be nourished. My first poetic nourishment was Seamus Heaney’s verse; when it comes to education I’m nourished by Sir Ken Robinson’s ideas. In their different ways, both have dared to be different… The Choosing by Liz Lochhead is a great starter for a careers lesson. I ended up an English scholar by default. I’m a scientist but after two golfing years out of school I returned at eighteen to take A levels in mathematics (because I could), Economics (because you didn’t need the O level) and (scratching around for a third) English. Such seemingly inconsequential decisions determine our lives. [wpvideo XSCV4H87] Poetry can transform lives. Marion Greene, my English teacher, identified Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est as the poem which made her believe that poetry had the power to affect things beyond the page. For me, as a country lad from an uneducated background who had been potato picking on his hands and knees for 651/2 p a day, it was Heaney’s Digging. [wpvideo tZ1oRlxS] Studying Heaney’s poetry was truly life changing. His thoughts about finding a poetic voice seem to me completely true: Finding a voice means that you can get your own feeling into your own words and that your words have the feel of you about them…How, then, do you find it? In practice, you hear it coming from somebody else, you hear something in another writer’s sounds that flows in through your ear and enters the echo-chamber of your head and delights your whole nervous system in such a way that your reaction will be, “Ah, I wish I had said that, in that particular way.” This other writer, in fact, has spoken something essential to you, something you recognise instinctively as a true sounding of aspects of yourself and your experience. And your first steps as a writer will be to imitate, consciously or unconsciously, those sounds that flowed in, that in-fluence. They f*** you up, your mum and dad. Heaney’s Follower explores his sometimes troubled relationship between his farming background and his academic life-path. One of my early awkward poems acknowledged my debt to Heaney, how my poetic voice mimicked his and on a deeper level how my study of his poetry led me away from my roots. Breach of Copyright Muffled in the background a record of his voice. I’m breaching copyright, taping his soft Irish tones, making a sounding of my own. And that’s what I do now, this moment captured with borrowed words. I’m Heaney’s follower, trapped in his broad shadow. Heaney’s sonnet series Clearances at the heart of The Haw Lantern sees him make the ordinary extraordinary. In the sonnet, When all the others were away… he holds the line between magnificence and mawkishness with lyric dignity. [wpvideo xttCGrVB] The only poem I’ve managed about my dad of any worth has Heaney’s influence woven throughout; it won the 1988 Robin Lee Memorial Poetry Prize at the University of Sussex. Memorial I The dark of an Anglo-Saxon slide show – scrambling to complete a Milton essay in the lecture hall’s dimmed corner. Undercover operations exposed by the porter’s message – Urgent: ’phone home. I didn’t know, (but really knew) what was afoot. Father’s minor operation – just routine, but mother’s voice broke cancerous news. II The fast train slows softly into London’s King’s Cross, echoing its entry into York. Between the two the journey was smooth – contin- uation ’til destination assured. The last few miles are the worst – knowing the end is near but not knowing when. Suddenly it’s over, ended before it began. Terminated. III Energetic Jack Russells find solemnity impossible. This canine shows death scant respect, resists my self- imposed sorrow, pulls me away from the marble memorial, out the graveyard gate, barking and panting, alive with riotous celebration. The theme for this year’s University of York’s Festival of Ideas is North and South, apposite for a Sussex boy living in York. And Famous Seamus is reading! Get your ticket here! Authenticity is so important. When I last heard Heaney read he signed my brand new copy of his version of Beowulf. When I hear him in a couple of weeks, it’ll be my A level text of his poems – scratch and sniff sticker, arrow in the side of the head and all – which I’ll give him to sign!
Sometimes you intuitively pursue an opportunity and it blossoms into something quite remarkable. Last August Sophie Coulombeau emailed me about a project called StrangeBedfellows: creativity vs analysis in the age of austerity. Ten months later and our students have an exhibition at the Festival along with Heaney. And if you haven’t read Sophie’s book Rites, you should! PostScript: Defend Sir Ken! My colleague Alex Quigley @HuntingEnglish and Tom Bennett @tombennett71 both had a right pop at Sir Ken Robinson last weekend! Of course they still love him, but if they planted any doubt about our man in your minds have a look at this video, What inspires Sir Ken? [wpvideo FeMkDUsa] Up-date Seamus was upsettingly frail, the reason, I am sure, why he couldn't endure a post-reading book signing. He did still have plenty of sparkle, however, an example of which I have preserved in the follwing ditty: Famous Seamus Question from microphone number 2: My little brother says your poems are just death and potatoes. Are there two other words to describe your poetry you’d want us to take away tonight? He paused for thought; Sheer genius was his retort. - University of York, 26 June 2013 And, cheekily, Joan Concannon, the Festival Director, managed to sneak my copy of Seamus' poems into dinner and he signed it thus:
