Tag: overview

‘A Little History of Poetry’ by John Carey

Another book read with my English teacher hat on and one that helped me brush up my poetry knowledge. This book was published in April 2020.

As an English Literature graduate turned English teacher, I have ploughed through a fair amount of poetry in my time.  It's not my favourite form (I prefer a good novel) but I do have my favourite poems and writers that I return to frequently.  I hoped this book would contextualise them and perhaps give me some new avenues to explore.

I think it needs pointing out that this is a slightly odd idea for a book - a potted history of poetry that is accessible for the novice reader yet detailed enough to draw in more seasoned poetry readers (who you would expect would be the main readership for the book as people already receptive to poetry).  However, I think Carey has managed this well; the book covers a vast amount of ground, managing to fit in synopses, biography and context for a range of poems and poetry movements.  For me, it brought back memories of my undergraduate study - some good (it's always nice to revisit Larkin, Keats and Plath) and some less so (I hoped I'd heard the last of Piers Plowman, to be honest!)

The other strange thing about the book is that it can never be a totally objective history of poetry as it seems to promise - it's always going to include Carey's personal choices and preferences and I didn't agree with all his interpretations fully.  I absolutely bow down to him as being the expert, but I do think poetry is very subjective and open to personal readings, although it was interesting to hear about his take on poems that I know very well.  Carey's own preferences seemed most obvious in the amount of space allocated to individual poets - some were skimmed over in very little detail while others were explored in perhaps excessive depth (Yeats, I'm looking at you...)

Overall, I'd say this was a lovely book to use to contextualise your understanding of poets and their works - I certainly didn't realise that some of the poets were contemporaries or quite so closely linked.  The biographies are interesting and Carey is a knowledgeable and lively guide through the history of poetry.  It won't give you depth of understanding if you are already studying poems or poetic movements at a high level, but it's an accessible and entertaining read for those of us whose knowledge is perhaps a bit rusty!

I received a free copy of the book from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Photo by Samantha Hurley from Burst

Links to purchase this title in hardback and on Kindle from the UK Amazon site are below. The Quick and the Read may earn a commission on any purchases at no extra cost to you.

Shakespeare Summer Reads for Teachers

After publishing yesterday’s review of the absolutely brilliant ‘This is Shakespeare’ by Emma Smith, I had a think about books that have really helped me to get my head around Shakespeare for teaching.

As a self-confessed Shakespeare geek, it’s fair to say I’m not short of a Shakespeare book or two. However, few make it into my teaching toolkit.

I thought I’d share some of my favourites in case anyone is brushing up their Shakespeare this summer.

‘Essential Shakespeare Handbook’ by Leslie Dunton-Downer and Alan Riding (published by Dorling Kindersley) is always my first go-to when I’m approaching any Shakespeare play or production. It’s so clearly presented with scene-by-scene breakdowns of the play, plot summaries, character information, key quotations, context…if I had to pick one book only for my Shakespeare information, this would be it! ‘The Shakespeare Book’ (again published by Dorling Kindersley) does something similar with some lovely infographics.

For more detailed analysis into individual plays, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about the York Notes for GCSE and A Level series which are brilliant for students. For an engaging jaunt through the plays for you though, I’d recommend Ben Crystal’s series, ‘Springboard Shakespeare’. There’s separate books on ‘Macbeth’, ‘Hamlet’, ‘King Lear’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and they are suitably detailed and very readable. Ben Crystal’s ‘Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard’ is another accessible but really useful guide.

Rex Gibson’s ‘Teaching Shakespeare: A Handbook for Teachers’ has also proved useful to me over the years, especially in terms of approaching Shakespeare as plays to be performed rather than texts to be read. It has lots of ideas about how to bring Shakespeare alive for pupils.

If you’re more interested in reading around the subject of Shakespeare to give you a boost in the classroom, I can recommend Bill Bryson’s ‘Shakespeare’ and Catharine Arnold’s ‘Globe: Life in Shakespeare’s London’. Both are extremely engaging and full of snippets of information that will definitely help you in contextualising Shakespeare.

Finally, for your entertainment (but not for the faint-hearted or easily embarrassed), Pauline Kiernan’s ‘Filthy Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s Most Outrageous Sexual Puns’ is worth a look. It will help you understand all those double entendres and lurid allusions that are often lost on modern audiences – but probably isn’t one to use in the classroom! Great background knowledge though!

I hope you’ve found this useful – I’d love to hear your own Shakespeare recommendations too on my Twitter account @thequickandthe4 as I’m always looking for ideas.

My cat, Ivy, helping with this post