Is poetry taught well in schools?
I think mostly poetry is taught absolutely appallingly in schools because we're now living under a regime that thinks that what you do with poems is you keep asking children, and school students, questions that you as the teacher or the examiner already know the answer to. I think that is mostly just an exercise in humiliation and that really what we should be doing is only asking children questions about poems that we don't know the answers to. So, ideally we should be asking questions like does this poem remind you of anything? Does it remind you of anything you've read? Are there any questions you would like to ask about this poem? Are there any questions you would like to ask of anybody or anything in the poem? Are there any questions you would like to ask of the author? And then to get the children to be the people in the poem or to be the author and see what answers come up. I think only then will we liberate poetry from this appalling prison that we have put poetry in.