The Kids

Hannah Lowe

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781780375793
• eBook ISBN: 9781780375816
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Hannah Lowe taught for a decade in an inner-city London sixth form. At the heart of this book of compassionate and energetic sonnets are 'The Kids', her students, the teenagers she nurtured. But the poems go further, meeting her own child self as she comes of age in the riotous 80s and 90s, later bearing witness to her small son learning to negotiate contemporary London. Across these deeply felt poems, Lowe interrogates the acts of teaching and learning with empathy and humour. Social class, gender and race – and their fundamental intersection with education – are investigated with an ever critical and introspective eye. The sonnet is re-energised, becoming a classroom, a memory box and even a mind itself as 'The Kids' learn and negotiate their own unknown futures. These boisterous and musical poems explore and explode the universal experience of what it is to be taught, and to teach, ultimately reaching out and speaking to the child in all of us. The poems in the first section of the book draw on Hannah Lowe's experiences as a teacher in the 2000s, but the scenarios are largely fictitious, as are the names of the students.

II

38

Mr Presley

Teachers’ first names were secrets. I knew them all.

Miss Crane was Lynda. Mrs Kumachi, Rose.

And my teacher, Mr Presley, was plain old Paul.

So why one day I called him Uncle, and worse,

Uncle Paul, is anyone’s guess. The words

just slithered from my lips like a half-sucked sweet

while my classmates sniggered and I heard

that laughter squeeze around me like a trap net

or a draw-string sack. But why, the next week

did Mr Presley take his scissors, and raise

my plait to its jaws? For whose benefit,

for whose applause? I could feel the silver blades

and his hot chortling breath on the back of my neck

as the kids around me chanted do it do it!

39

Mrs Vanuka

On the cold stone floor of the art cupboard

she knelt us down, and her pudgy hands, gold-garrotted,

threw down the buckets. Dirty girls.

Let’s see you spit. The clip-clunk of her heels,

the door’s hard click – and we did, we did, I spat

until my mouth was sore and my tongue was fat,

while beyond the door we heard her talk,

and the tick-tock stab of the angry chalk.

I’d never known how much my own spit stank.

I spat again, again, until my whole mouth ached

and beside me Neshat sniffled and sobbed –

we couldn’t remember which of us first gobbed

or what had happened to make us hate each other

and the base of those buckets still barely covered –

40

Blocks

First I would draw my name in capitals –

H – A – N across the landscape of the paper

then make the letters three-dimensional,

then colour them, the edges always darker

like my name was standing in the sun,

each letter propping up another, and solid

as though made from wood or brick or iron.

I’d add a line for them to stand on, rooted.

In that house of risk – unstable, unwell –

where often I was thrown like a paper jet

downstairs and hit the hard floor of the hall,

sprawled useless as a crumbled alphabet,

those drawings mattered. That name I wrote for myself,

over and over, standing up for itself.

41

She

She brought me a glass of orange squash each morning

and hers was the strong soothing hand that led me

to school, and left me skipping or hopscotching

in the still-dark playground, while she drank her coffee

in the staff room. Then later, often, I’d see her

scolding some nervy tearful boy in the hall

and I’d repeat in my head is she my mother?

hearing her voice come down like the chunky heel

of a boot, stubbing ...

Table of contents

• Description
• Title Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• The White Dog
• I
• II
• III
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Copyright