How to Grow Your Own Poem

Kate Clanchy is a writer, teacher and journalist. Her poetry collection Slattern won a Forward Prize. Her short story ‘The Not-Dead and the Saved’ won both the 2009 BBC National Short Story Award and the VS Pritchett Memorial Prize. Her novel Meeting the English was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award. Her BBC 3 radio programme about her work with students was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes prize. In 2018 she was awarded an MBE for services to literature, and an anthology of her students' work, England: Poems from a School, was published to great acclaim. In 2019 she published Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, a book about her experience of teaching in state schools for several decades, which won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing; and in 2020 published How to Grow Your Own Poem, which Hollie McNish described as ‘the best book I’ve read about how to practise writing poetry’.

‘The best book I’ve read about how to practise writing poetry’ - Hollie McNish‘This determinedly unintimidating manual should prove valuable to teachers and aspirant poets. Clanchy's classroom is a giving and forgiving one: she expects her students to perform, but potentially only for themselves’ - Sunday Times‘This primer on writing is a literary Haynes manual, helping you to jump-start your stuttering thoughts into a smoothly purring poem. The no-nonsense Clanchy knows exactly who you need to read and how you should go about it’ - Daily Telegraph‘This utterly delightful and encouraging handbook is an energising mixture of anthology, advice and exercises to spark creativity’ - Daily Mail