The second episode of the Ted Hughes Society podcast to feature the English poet and educationist Pie Corbett. In the previous podcast Pie talked about how Ted Hughes had been an inspiration to him, as a student, as a young poet, and in his early teaching career how Ted Hughes's 'Poetry in the Making' was an invaluable resource in developing his own strategies for encouraging pupils’ poetry writing and in developing their language and thinking skills in general. In this episode, Pie talks about his work outside the classroom - as an inspector of schools, as an English advisor, and as a freelance consultant. Pie recounts how he was able to ensure a central place for poetry in the UK’s National Literacy Strategy, which was the foundation of English teaching in British schools from 1997 to 201; and how his involvement in the International Research Centre Project ‘language teaching through stories’ led to his establishing the Talk for Writing Project, built on four stages: imitation, innovation, independent application and invention - similar in many ways to Ted Hughes's ideas for encouraging children's writing in 'Poetry in the Making'. Pie also talks about his 'Reading Spine', an initiative to encourage the reading and study of the very best books in schools and not just the most fashionable or popular. This naturally includes the poetry of Ted Hughes, and not what Pie describes as ‘the bum and bogey’ school of children’s poetry. Pie closes the episode with two poems: one of his own, which he has never read publically before, and a poem by one of his pupils based on Ted Hughes's 'Amulet' showing the quality of work which is possible for a young writer to achieve through well-planned and sympathetic teaching of the kind which 'Talk for Writing' and 'Poetry in the Making' exemplify.

Pie has been a regular contributor the Times Educational Supplement  and among his many publications are his outstanding collection of poems for children Evidence for Dragons  (Macmillan 2011); Rice Pie and Moses (Macmillan 1995) a collection of poetry for children with fellow poets John Rice and Brian Moses; Talk for Writing Across The Curriculum (Open University Press 2020) with Julia Strong; and as an editor, A First Poetry Book  (2012 Macmillan) with Gaby Morgan) and The Works series of anthologies (Macmillan various).

The opening and closing music is from Beethoven's String Quartet No 14, opus 131, performed by the Orion String Quartet. (The extract is reproduced under Creative Commons licence IMSLP: Creative Commons Atribution Non-commercial No Derivative 3.0.) 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.