What do you wish you'd learned at school about poetry?

[Leanne]

That you'e probably never going to get good at it, so you might as well cuss like a harlot if you're not going to rhyme.

Or if you ARE going to rhyme, actually. Poetry is all about language...

James, those are all good ideas and all things I teach my students -- the trouble with this particular workshop was that it was trying to teach a bunch of teachers to teach poetry when they'd been taught poetry badly themselves. The golden rule for teaching anything is enthusiasm and it's hard to be enthusiastic about something your English teachers ruined for you.

For the record, the workshop went down very well (it was in September). Though I despaired at the ignorance of some participants, the majority have taken a few lessons on board and are delivering poetry as a regular part of their lessons. My own students don't like writing poetry that doesn't rhyme, so I've killed their couplets, taught them how meter works and have them writing sonnets and rondeaux as part of their assessment portfolios. Fortunately, thanks to rap/hiphop they have an excellent feel for rhythm that was easily translated into iambic pentameter.

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PS. I would never invite a student of mine to this forum, I'm sorry to say -- they're 15 and far too impressionable