Cirrus@Austlit

'Many years ago, in fact over fourteen, as a teacher of English, I realised that the poetry my students wrote for assessment remained just that— an assessment task. I read their poem, I judged it, awarded a mark and returned it to the student. Perhaps a parent might read it too, but mostly the poem would be filed away, marked and forgotten. It seemed to me that this part of the English and Literature courses was too valuable to be simply filed away. For many of the students the act of creating a poem caused them to wrangle with words, think about syntax, find pleasure in developing a metaphor, play with alliteration and have something to say that was rich in meaning to them. They found their voice, perhaps hesitant, perhaps shy, quite often angry, but through the complexities that make up poetry they were able to say something that had meaning for them. What was obvious to me was they needed a forum where other people could also read what they had to say, and so value their words.' (Introduction)