You’ll make the grade, alright; A
Vaccination. Your mother bought you
The revision guide. Well done. Now just hide
Your mind as you slide towards the exam in June.
It’s easy for you, laugh from the back of the room.
Feed on metaphors that have lain brown around the poem for years
Because the world can be a science and don’t you think you’re worth it? Let’s skate
The surface. Get sick with boredom together. Borderline fear. Enjambment. Personify. Onomatopoeia.
Your prediction says so, so never shake that tree. Eat the sour stuff. Don't think to question me.
Soon you'll stagger off to the right University.
Divide yourself further from the quiet giants you mocked
In the corridor. The herbivores you leapt over in class.
The Benchmarks of failure. Darwin’s lost hopes.
Who got poetry all wrong
Who wouldn't learn how to pass.
Comments
Yazmin | February 2, 2010 - 18:59
Is that us guys you're talking about sir?
:O
Yaz
gristo | February 2, 2010 - 20:49
Not at all, Yazmin. I was unfortunate enough to have watched a presentation for students led by the AQA Chief Examiner on how to 'correctly' analyse poetry. He suggested that there were correct and incorrect ways to analyse poems. It really annoyed me and so this is a poem for the kind of students he seems to want to create. Literature zombies, in my mind. Not like you at all! :)
insertponceyfre... | February 3, 2010 - 06:21
Gristo - I know bugger all about poetry but you sound like the kind of teacher that my sons have occasionally been lucky enough to have - one who veers off the expected path every now and again. It's the best kind to be and they seem to be getting rarer.
Yaz, you are lucky!
maddie4848 | February 6, 2010 - 16:21
really like this.. could have done with you at some poetry classes I've been to.. where they want me to write all kinds of ways.(rhymes.scans. metre length etc!!). i just want to write like i write... thanks for this...