Full Description
Hannah Lowe taught for a decade in an inner-city London sixth form. At the heart of this book of compassionate and energetic sonnets are fictionalised portraits of 'The Kids', the students she nurtured. But the poems go further, meeting her own child self as she comes of age in the riotous 80s and 90s, later bearing witness to her small son learning to negotiate contemporary London.
Across these deeply felt poems, Lowe interrogates the acts of teaching and learning with empathy and humour. Social class, gender and race - and their fundamental intersection with education - are investigated with an ever critical and introspective eye. These boisterous and musical poems explore the universal experience of what it is to be taught, to learn and to teach.
The Kids - a Poetry Book Society Choice - won the 2021 Costa Poetry Award and went on to be named Costa Book of the Year, and was also shortlisted for the 2021 T.S. Eliot Prize.
Contents
8 The White Dog
I
11 The Register
12 Try, Try, Try Again
13 Queen Bee
14 The Art of Teaching I
15 The Art of Teaching II
16 The Art of Teaching III
17 Technology
18 Sonnet for Vlad
19 The Only English Kid
20 Notes on a Scandal
21 Boy
22 Simile
23 The Sixth-form Theatre Trip
24 Sonnet for the A Level English Literature and Language Poetry Syllabus
25 Red-handed
26 Sonnet for the Punched Pocket
27 Pepys
28 Janine I
29 Janine II
30 The Unretained
31 All Over It
32 Sonnet for Rosie
33 Something Sweet
34 7/7
35 Ricochet
36 British-born
II
38 Mr Presley
39 Mrs Vanuka
40 Blocks
41 She
42 Bethena
43 Étudier
44 Martin and Pam
45 The Only Black Girl
46 Rain Dance
47 The Pitch
48 John I: Pink Humming Bird
49 John II: For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf
50 Love
51 So Amazing
52 The Stroke
55 Sonnet for Noah
56 Welling
57 Dear Professor
58 White Roses
59 Daughter
60 House
61 The River
62 Players
III
64 The Sky Is Snowing
65 Skirting
66 Scooting
67 Fire Scissors Drowning
68 The Size of Him
69 Sonnet for Boredom
70 Balloons
71 In H&M
72 Sonnet for Darren
73 Zoom
74 Aretha in the Bath
75 His Books
76 Anjali Mudra
77 Sonnet for Rory with Soap Bubbles
78 Nĭ hăo
79 Kathy, Carla
