A place for poetry: Teaching presents from my Aunts in Pakistan

Lockney, Karen ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8016-4114 (2012) A place for poetry: Teaching presents from my Aunts in Pakistan. English in Education, 46 (3). p. 197.

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Abstract

i. London E7
Walking to work from the tube,
the High Road rattles with metal shutters
rolling upwards. Pavements become coastlines
from elsewhere: boxes of plantains, dudhi, arvee;
hunks of watermelon piled in a crate.
Long rolls of sari cloth lean against shopfronts,
offcut squares in baskets. One day I buy one,
unfold it in class like a map, pass it round.
Its blue is that of schoolroom globes;
silver threads cross it like shipping lanes.
I ask about their aunts, their gifts
from Lagos, Ilford, Manila:
lifelines cast from somewhere to now.

ii. Cumbria
I drive to work down hedgerowed lanes,
recycling lesson plans in my head.
This morning, I found the fabric,
a fragment from a decade ago,
pressed in a ringbinder marked Poems.
Different pupils run it through their fingers.
I show them Googled images
of salwaar kameez, Lahore.
We are answering questions –
Discuss. Compare and contrast.
I try to answer them, see myself,
then and now, staring through vertical blinds
in Year 10 English classrooms.

Item Type:	Article
Journal / Publication Title:	English in Education
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	1754-8845
Departments:	Academic Departments > Health, Psychology & Social Studies (HPSS) > Children, Youth, Families and Community Work
Additional Information:	Karen Lockney is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cumbria, and an associate lecturer in Creative Writing for the Open University. She is in the final stages of a PhD in Creative Writing, focusing on relationships between poetry, place and rural identity.
Depositing User:	Anna Lupton
Date Deposited:	28 Jun 2019 14:43
Last Modified:	12 Jan 2024 10:31
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/4937

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