Please sir! No more poetry!

Free from the cares of office, Andrew Motion has been busy. In fact, he has been a frenzy of activity. His output on Bob Dylan, Philip Larkin and the like has been well publicised; however, the Motion Report into poetry in schools is less well-known.  

I still have dreams about my short-trousered self standing on a flip-lid desk straining to recite some featureless excerpt of Walter de la Mare. Motion agrees that poetry and school often do not mix; he writes in the report’s foreword:

‘Poetry is commonly described as a valuable part of our national life. But by common consent the existing general audience for it is much smaller than it could be, and the enthusiasm for it in schools is less than it should be. Indeed, poetry in schools is often seen as ‘a problem’ by many teachers, and as a bore by many pupils; outside schools it is often regarded as being on a par with clog-dancing.