When teen author James Dawson was growing up he dreaded poetry lessons, but the fuzzy line between songwriting and poetry slowly changed all that – and now he’s finally out of the poetry closet

Whenever Miss Walker, a somewhat embattled English teacher from West Yorkshire, used to announce her lesson would focus on poetry, a groan ran around the class. Poems were boring. Without exception, a photocopied sheet would be plonked in front of us. They were often about the first world war. I remember once our task was to illustrate such a poem with felt-tip poppies. I’d love to tell you the poets we studied back in the 1990s but I can’t remember a single name. I do, however, recall a lot of dead men, clouds, daffodils and tigers burning bright.

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But here’s the interesting thing. At the same time that I was dreading poetry lessons at school I was actually writing poems. Only I didn’t know it. What I was actually writing were song lyrics. Inspired by the likes of Blur, Garbage, Pulp, Placebo and even the Spice Girls, I would jot down the odd chorus or verse and not for a second did I think of myself as a poet. There was a fundamental disconnect with the stuffy, fusty poems we studied in school and the poetry I was listening to on my twin-deck cassette player.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Song writers such as Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain turned James Dawson onto poetry, even though he didn’t realise it at the time! Photograph: PR

Perhaps it was the fact that so many of the poems were written decades, if not centuries, before I was born. Perhaps it was that so many of them were written by long dead poets or that the language was not of my era. Whatever the reason, the poems and the poets felt so far out of my reach that I was unable to relate to them in the way that I could to Kurt Cobain or Kate Bush. Maybe it was a matter of presentation – a sad photocopied A4 sheet simply isn’t as cool or inspiring as David Bowie, whatever the words printed on it.

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During my 20s I was in an electro-pop garage band (oh who wasn’t?) and was responsible for the lyrics, but still failed to see myself as a poet.

It was around this time I started to use song lyrics in my poetry lessons when I was still teaching. As ludicrous as it sounds I got my Year 6 class to analyse Girls Aloud’s Love Machine. It’s gloriously bonkers with “gift-wrapped kitty cats, only turning into tigers when we gotta fight back” or “let’s go, eskimo, out into the blue.” Needless to say, Year 6 loved it in a way I’d never loved poetry lessons. The penny dropped: songs are poems. Imagery, personification, vocabulary, structure, repetition… it’s all there in every song and every poem.

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The line between singer and poet has always been fuzzy. Spoken Word and rap often blur at the boundaries. There is still a place for the poets of old: Plath, Hughes, Wordsworth, Milton, Thomas and the rest, but I think that if we want to encourage young people to call themselves poets, we have to present them with people they can identify with. Laura Dockrill is a poet, author and songwriter. Kate Tempest and George the Poet occupy both poetry corner and the pop charts. Caroline Bird’s first collection was published when she was15 years old. Steven Camden is a spoken word poet, playwright and YA author. Few young people would fail to be inspired by poet and activist Anthony Anaxagorou.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest George the Poet performing his poetry in London. Photograph: Joseph Okpako/Redferns via Getty Images

The National Curriculum needs urgent attention. I cringed in horror at the proposed changes made by former Education Secretary Michael Gove before his departure and his successor, Nicky Morgan, made few changes in the run up to the election. The syllabus is screaming out to be modernised and made relevant. There are so many awesome poets alive now who will come to your schools and actually do poems LIVE!

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When writing my latest novel, All of the Above, the main character, Toria, was lacking a certain something. She was too like the characters I’d written before. And then I started writing poetry from her point of view and everything fell into place. Her love of wordplay, her cynicism, her low self-worth all came bubbling to the surface and she was suddenly three-dimensional. Her poems help her to make sense of her fluctuating identity, something I would encourage others to do too. Since finishing with Toria’s poetry, I’ve continued with my own. It’s taken well over 30 years, but I’m now officially coming out of the poetry closet.

However you feel about the poetry you’re doing at school, I’d urge you to have a go at starting poetry book. At the end of the day it’s just playing with words. Words are like flavours, they’re gorgeous and work in surprising combinations. Some are piquant and sour, while others are rich and creamy. Words, even a single word outside of a sentence, can emote and provoke. Have a go! Cook your words.

James Dawson’s latest book is All of the Above is available to buy from the Guardian bookshop, as are his other books including This Book Is Gay.

Catch up with everything we’re doing in our poetry themed week here.