This is how to rescue poetry from shackles of classrooms

My admonition last week directed at teachers who approach the teaching of poetry mechanically has drawn considerable reaction. Some of it has been sharply critical. I have received messages from teachers who felt I had overreached myself. Some accused me of speaking like a know-it-all, an “ogre” perched above the realities of the classroom. Others, fortunately, have been more reflective. They have acknowledged, with a degree of honesty, that there is indeed a problem in how poetry is being taught across the country.

For me, this is a period of reflection on poetry and its place in our schools and our public life. I have found myself returning again and again to a question that refuses to go away: what exactly are we doing to poetry in our classrooms? And what is poetry doing to our learners in return?

Let us admit from the outset that our profession is under pressure. We are running a system stretched between the demands of examinations and the more elusive task of nurturing imagination. As a bad boy, I was particularly surprised when one teacher wrote to me in recognition. He quoted my poem Train Journey to Mombasa, a piece that has travelled widely in schools and was even a set piece during the 2019 school drama festival. Let me say something plainly about this poem. I wrote that poem to be enjoyed and not dissected into sterile fragments before it is first allowed to breathe. Get it right. I did not write it to be reduced to a checklist of stylistic devices before it is heard and experienced.

I have a problem with teachers who introduce a poem as a laboratory specimen to students. When you do so, something dies in it. The truth, uncomfortable as it may be, is that poetry in many of our classrooms has been imprisoned by method. I want to dare say that students are taught to fear the poem before they feel it. Yes. They are trained to hunt for metaphors before they have tasted meaning. They are asked to label devices before they have encountered delight. That is bad pedagogy. Period.

Do not get me wrong. I have had the privilege of having extremely fruitful conversations about poetry with many experts. The most exciting was with Nympha Ozeugwu. Nympha has experience in building creative communities, curating literary events, and developing platforms that connect African peoples. Our discussion moved between pedagogy and the future of African literary expression. What has stayed with me from that exchange is a simple but profound idea. We must rescue poetry from the hands of those who are not inspired or not adequately prepared to teach it as a living art. This is not an attack on teachers. It is a call to reimagine how we prepare and empower teachers.

What I think is that there is an urgent need to establish poetry clubs in all our schools. This is doable. From Ozeugwu’s experience in curating literary spaces, these clubs will become springboards for exploring poetry as a space of cultural dialogue. They will also reconnect learners to the spoken word and performance. In such spaces, poetry will cease to be an object of fear. It will become a performance and a conversation. A learner does not merely need to identify a metaphor but to inhabit it.

In many jurisdictions where art is taken seriously, poetry evenings are not a rare part of cultural rhythm. They are as ordinary as weekend markets or community gatherings. In Kenya, however, such spaces are increasingly rare. In my own hometown of Kakamega, the only consistent cultural engagement comes once a month at the Kakamega Book Club. Beyond such pockets of resilience, the cultural silence is palpable.

If you live in Nairobi, you will recall that many of the community halls, which once buzzed with literary and artistic activity, are now largely empty. Spaces that once hosted poetry and theatre have been surrendered to other uses or left idle. We have, in effect, lost the everydayness of cultural expression. This loss is both sentimental and educational. When young people do not see poetry performed, they assume it is only meant to be read in silence and dissected in classrooms.

We must therefore create poetry evenings, not as occasional spectacles, but as regular cultural practice. We must create spaces where poems are heard, felt, and debated. More importantly, we must learn from experienced curators like Nympha Ozeugwu and others who understand how to bring poetry to life in ways that are inclusive and generative.

There is also an economic dimension we rarely discuss. Poetry, like all creative arts, is not only cultural capital. It is a potential economic activity. Performance poetry, literary festivals, digital spoken word platforms, and community readings can generate livelihoods and ecosystems of creativity. We impoverish ourselves when we treat poetry as purely academic content. Teachers need to know this.

Now, let me turn to a serious policy gap. Having studied the designs of the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development for Theatre and Film from Grade 10 to 12, I remain struck by a glaring gap. Poetry performance is scarcely visible within the formal arts pathways. One is left wondering. Do the designers of the curriculum not recognise poetry as performance? Or has the exam-driven culture narrowed imagination to such an extent that performance is now considered optional rather than essential? Unless poetry is repositioned as something to be spoken, staged, and lived, we risk producing learners who can define poetry but cannot feel it.

My argument is simple. Poetry must be returned to life. It must leave the exam paper and re-enter the gathering, the school club, and the community hall. Let us support teachers to teach it not as a list of devices but as an encounter with language and emotion. Students must be allowed to experience it before they analyse it. If we succeed, poetry will no longer be a dreaded section in an exam paper.