Young poets “write back” at elitist education system and the poetry canon

The current pandemic saw poetry cuts on the GCSE and provoked nation-wide debates on the place of poetry in education during adverse times.

Youth poets like Kadish Morris warned “poetry saved me, don’t deny it to the next generations”. The Poetic Justice Values project asks what young people really think: how ‘good’ is English education for the young spirit and what ‘good’ is turning to live and digitally circulated poetry during global crisis?

Subjects like poetry and the arts provide a platform for English schools to teach young people’s spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development with British Values, known as SMSC, mandated by the government. But the SMSC ideal and poetry debates (i.e. page versus stage poetry divide) are rife with historical prejudice. These debates, central to young lives, often leave behind the varied experiences and voices of young people living in the UK.

To explore these questions, the Poetic Justice Values project partnered with Young Identity (YI), Manchester’s award-winning spoken word collective and arts charity, led by Shirley May (CEO and Artistic Director) and Nicole May (Executive Director). Together with the YI team of facilitators, and young people, the project delivered a series of workshops - a creative-critical research intervention. Workshop facilitators also included the following guest poet educators:

• Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, author of Postcolonial Banter, and Tangled in Terror: Uprooting Islamophobia.
• BREIS, founder of Student of Life, a Hip Hop inspired arts organisation, author of Brilliant Rappers Educate Intelligent Students, and Diary of a Creative Mind.
• Deborah ‘Debris’ Stevenson, author of acclaimed debut play Poet in da Corner.

Young people’s views, values and experiences of spoken word and the education system were captured in an original poem titled Oral to A4 created by award-winning poet Princess Arinola Adegbite aka P. A. Bitez, produced by AndWhat TV, a contemporary spoken word channel and educational resource. With special thanks to the generous support of a digital resource award by the Cambridge Digital Humanities (CDH).

Read more on the CDH blog

Watch the full video of P. A. Bitez's poem:

Partners

Special thanks to our partners and funders Cambridge Digital Humanities, Economic and Social Research Council ESRC and Young Identity. Learn more about the work of the Cambridge ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership for Social Sciences.