Congratulations to our Head of English, Mrs Freya Swan, who has been published in The Magazine of the National Association for the Teaching of English!

Along the editorial theme of Why Poetry?, Mrs Swan explores environmental concerns and children’s poetry in her article “The Lost Words”.

Mrs Swan, who was awarded a MA in Children's Literature with distinction in November 2022, said “I first explored ecology and environment in children's literature as part of my MA.

“I wrote the article after teaching "The Lost Words" to last year's Year 7, adapting some of the content from one of my MA essays.”

A fascinating read, an excerpt of which we have detailed below – we encourage everyone to read the full article here.  

Why Poetry?

the lost words; environmental concerns and children’s poetry.

Engaging in Environmental concerns.

Environmental concerns are very much on everyone’s minds. Looking at new releases in children’s literature we can see the number of authors aiming to draw young readers into the discussion. I first read Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’ the lost words as part of my study for an MA in Children’s Literature. The module was ecology, environment and youth culture.  I was struck by the form they had chosen for their quest to engage children with words and nature. My question was, why poetry? There are a number of novels that look at current environmental issues, for example a novel I recently read, and would recommend, Where the River Runs Gold by Sita Brahmachari, springs to mind so what is it about poetry that adds interest and weight to their intention? It is significant that Pullinger[1] describes poetry as multimodal ie we are experiencing the message in different ways.

In the lost words multimodality is at work through the poems’ spoken and read elements, and in the vivid illustration that completes the “spell.”  The word “spells”, is itself significant, the poems in the collection are called spells not poems, this speaks to the power of words, and magic to connect with nature through childish imagination. Looking at this collection with my year 7 class we spent a lot of time just exploring the front cover and the aspect of spells. They loved the idea of casting spells, the fact that the collective noun for goldfinches (pictured on the cover and throughout the collection) is a “charm” and the gold lines of the illustration connoted something precious.

I am comfortable teaching poetry, in fact I very often prefer it to teaching a novel where chapters don’t neatly fit into one or two lessons and reaching the end can seem interminable, but there is also a brilliant resource created to go with the lost words. “An Explorer’s Guide to the lost words” was written by Eva John and is supported by the Muir trust. It is a very full and rich resource, it is very unlikely you would be able to do all the activities they suggest but I made use of a number of their ideas as we explored the poems.

Year 7 were outraged to find that the name; the lost words was a deliberate ploy to re-find the lost words. The premise is that the Oxford Junior Dictionary omitted these nature words after they decided they were no longer current in children’s vocabulary. Macfarlane and Morris’ ambition was to reinstate them and “charm” them back into being. The first spontaneous thing year 7 did with this knowledge, was to scour the collection identifying which words they did or didn’t know, whilst being appalled that people might think they didn’t need words such as “conker” and “dandelion” !...