1/ Poetry suffers at the hands of people who say it must be this way or that way when the history of poetry tells us that it is a fantastic wonderful array of variety, invention and difference. https://twitter.com/jonnywalker_edu/status/1298244539036180480

2/ Consider 14th century free verse translations of the Psalms, Kurt Schwitters’ found poems, Edward Lear’s metrically regular nonsense, Ann Sexton’s ‘confessional’ Poems @IMcMillan ‘s daily prose poem tweets, Langston Hughes’s blues/gospel poetry. Many flowers bloom!

3/ A lot of our training (ie poetry in school) asks students to argue back from ‘poetic techniques’ to ‘prove’ that a poem is ‘effective’. Many remember this as tiresome and soulless, then come to poetry as adults and may not know it can just be read, chanted, sung for fun.

4/ Luckily there are fantastic poets (I include rap and grime) all around us and many fantastic teachers of poetry see eg @KateClanchy1 and @NATEfeed @clpe1 @EngMediaCentre @BarbaraBleiman
@PoetrySociety

5/ There are 1000s of ways to write poems. The easiest way to have a go yourself is to read a poem and say to yourself, ‘I could write like that’ where ‘like that’ = ‘in the style of’ or ‘with that feeling’ or ‘with that idea’ or ‘triggered by that’.

6/ There aren’t any fixed stylistic features of poetry as a whole. There are 1000s of styles of poetry and they have their own different and various stylistic features.

7/ Just put poems up on the wall. No comment. Give pupils post-its to stick on round the poem. Or bits of poems: See how morn in russet-mantle clad steps o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.