Where Go the Boats? A poem in a little child’s head | Letter

Michael Rosen’s moving piece on the government’s view of how poetry should be taught (Letter from a curious parent, 7 April) brought back to me one of those moments in any teacher’s career when they think: “Yes!” I had taken my class of six-year-olds from a deprived council estate to the Clifton suspension bridge as part of our project on bridges. We walked across, looking at the towers and the cables, talking about how it had been built, but when we stopped and looked down at the Avon, a little voice beside me said: “Dark brown is the river / Golden is the sand. / It flows along for ever / With trees on either hand” – from the Robert Louis Stevenson poem I had taught them months previously. Magic – just what poetry should be.
Rosemary Chamberlin
Bristol