Poetry has the power to inspire and give voice to feelings we find difficult to express in other ways. For children and young people poetry can be a jumble of words that adults are trying to control them with.

At The Betjeman Society we think John Betjeman understood childhood and adolescence very well and wrote about it in ways that are meaningful to today’s generation. He was bullied, felt lonely and misunderstood, so ‘things’ became important to him because they were loyal, and to him people being kind and making him feel safe were vital. In today’s world these seem just as important as ever. He was also one of the first conservationists who recognised the dangers of industrialisation and intensive agriculture, and the impact on environment and the British Landscape. Young people will recognise the warnings he gives about bad town planning, greedy developers and indiscriminate building.

So we invite teachers to use Betjeman’s poetry to help children and young people understand their feelings and express them through poetry. We are grateful to the Dragon School for allowing us to use their lesson plans as examples about teaching young people about Betjeman’s poetry, though the principles hold well for any poet. Because of copyright we are unable to provide the text of the specific poems used but these are widely available and please acknowledge the help the Dragon School has given in providing these plans. We would be very pleased to receive and publish your own plans to add to these and help other teachers!

We also suggest the plans help provide evidence for Ofsted’s new Inspection Framework. The intent is to demonstrate how poetry can give a voice to intense feelings, the implementation should be interactive and memorable while the impact could be lifelong and inspirational.

Most of all enjoy Betjeman’s poetry. Despite his often sad themes he laughed much in his life and made others happy. Betjeman was also a great technical poet whose verses rhyme and scan and were meant to be read out aloud. Today’s rappers use the same techniques, and more than ever we need poetry to help us make sense of modern life however you understand it and Betjeman knew how difficult change was to cope with.

ENJOY!

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