This slim paperback collects a series of radio talks English poet Ted Hughes gave for the BBC Schools Service in the 1960s. That fact evokes a time when you could expect a class of ten-to-fourteen-year-olds to pay attention to a radio in the classroom. No powerpoint, no video, no smartboard. “Wireless” meant something else in those days.
So the technology of delivery is outdated. But what about the content? It holds up well. Hughes has thought intelligently about what to present in just nine lessons that will set pupils off on the adventure of creating their own poems and stories. He does this without condescending to his listeners.
Hughes illustrates his points with a selection of poems, both his own and those of other poets. For publication, he supplemented the talks with notes for classroom teachers and additional verses.
The book closes with a short chapter in which Hughes tackles the challenge of correlating experience with words. The difficulty of finding just the right word is evident, but the other half of the equation presents a challenge, as well. We are barely aware of all that our senses take in; in what sense is that experience? (In an earlier chapter, he asks how many of us, appearing in court, would want to have our case decided by a jury that recalled no more of the evidence than we do of last week’s lessons). Hughes counters this by speculating that a sense called psychometry may be something we all have, not just the few for whom it is documented. This final chapter is not numbered, as the others are, which leads me to think it was not one of the broadcast talks. Possibly a wise decision; I didn’t notice this anomaly at first and found myself wondering what 10-to-14-year-olds, sitting at their desks as the words came out of a wooden box, would have made of it.
I think this book would still be valuable for anyone tasked with introducing poetry to children, or for adults who want to bootstrap themselves into the matter of reading and writing poems. ( )

wonderful animal poems. plus essays. ( )