Review of my book of political poems

 

Qualms are Quivers of Disquiet: ‘Words United’ by Michael Rosen

 19 July 2025/Posted byJim Aitken

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By Jim Aitken

Michael Rosen loves words. He loves their sense, their sounds, their layers of meaning and the uses they can be put to. He does not like the way politicians use them to hide their deeds, their true intent. He does not like obfuscation in language whether in speech or on the page.

For Beckett ‘words are all we have’ and for Sartre words can be ‘loaded pistols.’ Rosen’s latest collection ‘Words United’ (published by Culture Matters) would seem to accept both these definitions. In his Preface he tells us that our ‘words are not enough to express the horror and depravity of what’s going on’ in our world today.

Yet, like Beckett’s characters who must keep on using words, must keep talking against all the existential odds, Rosen will keep on writing, keep on placing his words in the right order to serve his meaning and intention. He then questions, ‘could words puncture the armour that surrounds our politicians as they engineer war, starvation and mass killing?’ All he can say is that he hopes so and this is where his words become ‘loaded pistols.’

He knows how to fire his words and who to fire them at. But he is also going to have a good time using them, and this collection is witty, amusing and entertaining as well as well as being politically astute. The collection has been written in the last few months with a couple of poems written earlier. It is not all poetry – there are humorous anecdotes, sketches and some performance pieces. The book is written in three overlapping sections: Words, Words, Words; What Words Do We Trust?; and Words United.

Bogus words from Netanyahu

And the subject matter is largely about the genocide going on in Gaza. He casually picks up a comment made by Netanyahu ‘about our ancestral lands.’ These words get Rosen thinking about ‘how things are going in my ancestral lands.’ He thinks about Harrow, where he was born, on to Pinner, Rickmansworth and Muswell Hill ‘where I was brought up.’ He muses that Netanyahu maybe didn’t have these ancestral lands in mind. Then he goes on to Whitechapel and Bethnal Green ‘where my parents were brought up.’ Again, he thinks that Netanyahu probably didn’t have them in mind.

From these places he then goes to Massachusetts where his father was born, on to Poland, Lithuania and the Austro-Hungarian Empire where ancestors did come from only to realise that Netanyahu didn’t mean these places either. He ends the poem:

I mean, I can’t even go to the flat
where I lived as a kid
ring the bell
and say, ’Hi, this is my ‘ancestral land.’
I don’t think I’d get very far with that.

This poem, like others, comes about through the misuse of words. The words are examined carefully and shown to be bogus. Exactly the same technique is used in the poem ‘Defiant Words’ where he takes the Chief Rabbi to task for talking about ‘our heroic soldiers.’ Rosen suggests that the Chief Rabbi and himself ‘already have one army: the British Army.’ He then brings up ‘the fury that’s been flung at those/who have suggested that/the deeds of Israel/are somehow the deeds of all Jews.’

He then indulges in an important digression invoking Norman Tebbitt’s cricket test of loyalty for Britons of Indian, Pakistani and West Indian descent failing that test by supporting their ancestral lands. By implication, the Chief Rabbi is actually showing dual loyalty and would fail Tebbitt’s test. Rosen then reminds those who accept the narrative of our heroic soldiers to remember the soldiers they align themselves with whose ‘origins lie/with those who once blew up a hotel/full of British citizens but are, mysteriously/not described as terrorists.’

He questions, ’Who is this ‘our’? He then says:

It’s Jews.
Isn’t that me?
I’m Jewish, aren’t I?

Rosen then mentions the heroic soldiers he refuses to align himself with:

going about their soldiering heroically
killing and torturing
heroically bulldozing and flattening
now heroically making sure
that 2 million people starve to death.

The term ‘our heroic soldiers’ has been shown what it really means and he defies and refuses to have any part of it. Clearly, you would have to be Jewish to write this since the Chief Rabbi’s words were directed at Jews, and it is worth recalling the politics of Rosen’s parents. They were both members of the YCL, opposing Mosley’s fascists in London’s east end during the 1930s. They were involved in the genuinely heroic Battle of Cable Street in 1936 when Mosley’s fascists, supported by the Daily Mail, attempted to march through the east end where many Jews were living at the time. Many Jews were communists in those days and active in the Labour movement. Other working- class groups like the Irish also opposed Mosley, and there was a clearer sense of class consciousness which seems to have got lost these days. Then it was uniforms and now it is suits. Then the problem for fascists and racists was Jews – today it is Moslems and migrants, net zero and wokery.

Rosen takes issue with those ‘people who don’t like the word “Islamophobic.”’ As he considers alternatives, he frames his response in a subtle way, seeking ‘another word/that describes ‘attacking a mosque’/or attacking people because they ‘’look Muslim’’, thus effectively legitimising the word Islamophobic.

The words ‘Promised Land’ have an unusual twist for Rosen. An anonymous family come to claim their ancestral home someone else lives in. They are told by the residents ‘my people have always lived here.’ The family persist with their claim and have a stack of documents to support their claim to the house. The residents are told, ’Turn to the page marked ‘Promised Land.’ When the residents ask who wrote this, they are told that God did, ’God wrote them, look/Here come His tanks.’

Brave words

This is not merely clever writing, it is brave writing. And bravery is required today to speak out against the unspeakable things that are happening. Rosen has been consistently speaking out for most of his life and it is encouraging that he still espouses socialist values which rise above national, ethnic and religious differences, believing that the human race is the only race in all its wondrous differences.
There are a few amusing poems about his parents. They both worked in education and obviously gave Michael a love for language and words. In ‘My Father’s Words’ Rosen recalls the time when he was doing homework and his father asked what his homework was about. ‘Stuff,’ replies the schoolboy. The father’s persistence breaks the boy down and it turns out Michael had been doing a piece on the Chartists. The father then gives the son some value-added education on the Chartists:

Then my father went over to the books
that my parents had on their shelves
like Marx on Engels
and Engels on Marx
and Marx on Marx
and Engels on Engels
and he pulled down a book called something like:
‘What Michael Needs to Know About the Chartists’
and he dropped it on the table.

This tale has all the hallmarks of similar tales that the comedian Alexei Sayle once gave on stage about his Jewish and communist parents. Naturally, such memories would leave a lasting impression on a child. But for Rosen this memory goes deeper still as his father then told him what Michael’s great-grandfather once said to him. His Zeyde (grandfather) asked his father, ’You know vossiz a union? ’The Zeyde then takes a box of matches and says to Michael’s father:

One match you can break.
Two matches, you can break.
Three matches you can break.
But take the whole box of matches,
you can’t break.
That is vossiz a union.

This lesson, for Rosen, is as relevant today as it was when Rosen first believes this tale was told in 1890, on to when his father heard it ‘around 1930’. We need to be retelling this story all over again –
this tale of class solidarity is incredibly pertinent today.

Another tale from childhood is told when Rosen recalls saying to his parents that he likes Biology, Instantly, they respond, ‘You could become ….. a DOCTOR.’ While his parents were teachers and thought of teaching as worthy, their interior league table of professions rated being a doctor higher. But above that being ‘a Jewish Communist Doctor’ was higher still. Rosen plays with his reader by informing them, ‘And you know what they did next, don’t you.’ They took him to see a Jewish Communist Doctor ‘who could tell me how to become a/Jewish Communist Doctor.’

Playful words

There is a wonderful playfulness in Rosen’s writing and it comes from the stories of his childhood but no doubt more so in his long life of working with children, listening to them, engaging with them and sharing his love of words with them. His style of writing has the simplicity of what could come from a child yet he is dealing with subject matter that is politically mature. Bringing the storytelling technique to political discourse makes the politics more illuminating on the page. It also makes it more accessible to readers of all kinds.

As well as this playfulness, Rosen reveals a concise logic in everything he writes, a process of ratiocination, the kind of exact thinking shown by the metaphysical poets in the careful way they developed their poems. Like them, Rosen knows exactly where he is going in his work and knows how he intends to conclude well in advance of getting there. The love of words creates a playfulness in his work but there is a clear ratiocination at work as well. This wonderful combination of qualities makes his collection very readable.

For example, Rosen can also take a commonplace word like qualms and run with it as he applies it to the genocide in Gaza. In a rather innocuous way he states, ’Tonight I’m thinking about ‘qualms.’ He gives an example that could apply to qualms about ‘expelling someone from school.’ And to fit the mood of having mentioned school he says, ‘Qualms are quivers of disquiet/when you feel queasy.’ Such language is the language of teaching alliteration in the classroom. It can and should be playful and enjoyable. He then remarks, ‘I thought that people would have qualms about Gaza.’

Rosen then tells us that the two main Jewish newspapers don’t seem to have any qualms. He imagines possible Jews having qualms about the genocide but being afraid of voicing them ‘in case they’ll be accused of being self-hating.’ In a playful way he continues, ‘No-one wants to be accused of having/self-hating qualms.’ He then suggests that those who have no qualms and say they believe it is necessary to wage war in Gaza and ‘it’s all the other people’s fault’, Rosen cautions:

do they catch sight of the flattened cities
the terrified, scarred and bleeding people?
The Tik Tok films of laughing soldiers
grabbing the innards of people’s flats, cupboards
and drawers.

Finally, he imagines ‘the qualm is put back in the cupboard’ and a sense of acceptance descending on the group, ’when someone says that it only looks bad/because people who hate us say it’s bad.’ Michael Rosen remains appalled at what Israel is doing.

In the poem ‘Trump has words with Trump’ Michael explores how the hidden, secretive face of capitalism has now turned into the full-frontal horror show under Trump. Before his ascent to power, capitalism and big business seemed to keep the masses at bay. It was generally said in the past ‘there is no ruling class/acting in league with itself/running the show.’ Rosen, however, remained curious about the huge disparities in wealth, and how ‘the wealth could co-exist/with the poverty.’ The arrival of Trump has changed all that:

What’s happened is that
business is government
and
government is business.

For Rosen ‘Trump is/the ruling class/The ruling class/is Trump. Where’s your liberalism now in the free world? he seems to ask. And in a delightful poem called ‘Rags’, a son asks his father, ’Daddy, what’s that pile of rags in the corner? The father replies,’ That, dear, is the cloak of liberalism.’ Contemporary capitalism, or late capitalism as some have it, has no qualms about being nothing more than business management run by a caste of mediocrities and opportunists. This is how all western nations operate today. The centre has moved to the far right and Rosen takes issue with Starmer for his ‘island of strangers’ speech with its nod to Enoch Powell.

In Rosen’s poem of the same name, he addresses Starmer directly and recalls the time he nearly died from Covid. Rosen had a gruesome time trying to recover as he had difficulty breathing. He had to undergo a tracheostomy, had to learn how to start walking again with a stick and then without a stick. All this was made possible by:

people on this ‘island of strangers’
from China, Jamaica, Brazil, Ireland
India, USA, Nigeria and Greece.

These three lines are used twice in the poem to emphasise their international dimension,
as Rosen concludes by saying to Starmer,’ If ever you’re in need as I was/may you have an island of strangers/like I had.’

Inane and biased words

In a delightful flourish of sketches, ‘Great Interviews: Words From The Past And Present’, Rosen wittily yet seriously attempts to capture the inanity of our media. He starts with Israel speaking: ‘The reason we’re not letting food into Gaza has nothing to do with depriving the people of Gaza of food.’ The interviewer, like the ones on the BBC, simply says, ’Thanks,’ followed by, ’And now here’s Fred with the weather news/Later in the show, can double-glazing help you lose weight?

This is the puerile talking shop that capitalism has become. A series of variations on this interview with Israel has Julius Caesar being asked about rebuilding Carthage, ‘On the ruins of the old Carthage where 1000s of Carthaginians were killed? Caesar’s brusque response is to say, ‘Carthage belongs to Rome.’ Caesar is duly thanked by the interviewer who then he finishes off with, ‘And here’s Flavia with today’s cookery tips.’

There are some hilarious ones about the Siege of Leningrad, India in 1858, one jointly with a Starmer and Trump double-act, and a delightful one by God which people of faith should also find amusing.
God is asked if he gave Israel to the Jews. God replies Yes. He is then asked, ’Did you own the land that you gave to the Jews? God replies that he owns everywhere, to which the interviewer asks, ‘Have you given away any other lands? God replies, ‘Yes. Yorkshire.’

‘Words United’ even has its own slogan – ‘Words united, will never be defeated.’ You simply can’t get better than that. There are so many delights in this book and as readers we should all be grateful that Michael Rosen not only recovered from Covid but also that he never became a doctor.

Words United by Michael Rosen, 120 pps., £10 inc. p. and p., is available here. All profits will go to Medical aid for Palestine.

Learning how to write and speak: 'how we break things down' may not always be the best way to 'build things up'

When we teach 'language' or 'a language' there is an immediate problem of methodology. It's the tension between 'how we use language' and 'how linguists have broken language into what they think are its parts'. 

The 'how we use language' part is at its heart a) 'conversation' and b) the many written forms that we've invented. We know that many people in the world learn their own language and the language(s) they come across because, say, of migration, is through 'immersion'. This is because they are 'in' situations in which people use language. 

But many other people may learn a language in part through actual or 'pretend' forms of 'immersion' (conversations in class) but the other part is through learning the categories that linguists have invented. One obvious one: conjugations. Many of us have learned a language in part by learning how to say things like this: 'Je suis, tu es, il/elle/on est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils/elles sont'. When we learn these, we rarely question why it's in that order, or even why we're learning that particular category. The usual justification for learning this is that it's useful and helps you 'know' the language. What happens though, if you shake this up and ask, 'Is this more useful than another way of breaking up the verb system?' What if, instead of 'conjugating the present tense in French' (which is what I've just done), we say, 'how do you talk about 'what I am' in French in the present, the future and the past - or in other ways even? In other words, I create what might be called a horizontal conjugation which would come out something like this: je suis, j'étais, je serai, j'ai été, j'avais été, je serais, j'aurais éte, je fus...and others that I can't think of for the moment because I'm just relying on my memory to write this!

Now let's do something like this in English: I am, I am being, I will be, I was, I was being, I have been, I have been being, I would have been, I would have been being,  I had been, I had been being, 

Why am I doing this? In order to show that there are many ways we can chop up language into its parts. We might say 'the conjugation fo the verb 'to be' is...' but I've just shown another conjugation of the verb 'to be' and of course I could repeat that using 'you', 'he/she/it', 'we', and 'they' (or their equivalents in other languages). Why is it then that we say (or have come to accept) that the best way to learn the verb 'to be' is 'vertically' in their respective tenses (present, past etc) and not 'horizontally' across the tenses, as I've just demonstrated? 

I don't know the answer to that question other than to say - that's the custom.

What this tells us is that we break language down into parts and systems but we never know why it's in these parts in that particular way. But we may also never know just how useful or not-useful these parts are, even though I've heard people describe these parts as eg 'the building blocks' of language, or some such. No, they're not the building blocks of language. They are the building blocks of language-teaching. I think it would be quite hard to sustain an argument that says that language itself has building blocks, unless we talk of the stages a very young child goes through in order to move from no-language to being able to speak. This makes me wonder whether there could even be (in theory) a language-teaching programme that imitated the stages we all go through when we learn how to speak! 

First lesson we would do what one year olds do, which in technical terms means 'babbling phonemes'. Second lesson might be doing a lot of staring at people near to us and using phonemes (not words) to indicate it's them as with mum-mum-mum and da-da-da-da. Third lesson might be important processes like wanting a drink or a cuddle which we indicate with a mix of prepositions like 'up' and single words like 'dink'. Ideally, while we do this, a speaker of the language is translating for us and repeating the full versions of what it is we want. And on we go...

So what am I saying here? I'm saying that we often assume that in order to learn how to do something, we have to learn the parts of that process as they were broken down and described by the scientists and theorists. However, that may not correspond to how the process actually happens or works - in this case, how a native speaker learns a language. Put another way:  'how we break it down' isn't necessarily the only way or the best way to 'build it up'. 

This is most apparent to me in the way in which writing is being taught at Key Stage 2 in maintained schools in England. Some people have 'segmented' and described English into 'parts of speech'/'word classes' and 'functions'. They've squeezed in a bit of elementary 'stylistics' and told the children that when you use these in the ways that we say are good and necessary, you're writing. I will say again, though, 'how we break it down' isn't necessarily the only way or the best way to 'build it up' - in this case how to write or what to write.

And again, I'll say, these parts of language that they've identified are by no means the only parts anyway. To take one example: if you're writing a story, you may well want some good dialogue. What is being given to children as the 'rules' of writing sentences may well be of little or no use for you to do this. For a start, a lot of dialogue is not in full sentences and actually getting our characters to talk in full sentences would sound stilted and very odd - in other words bad writing!

 Good naturalistic dialogue that both sounds real but also reveals what people are thinking, their motives, their personality AND moves the plot on works to a whole different set of conventions, patterns and in genre terms, yes 'rules'. In order to learn how to do this, you may need to eg look at some great dialogue in novels and plays, read it out loud, imitate it; do some improvisations, perhaps record these improvisations, and then to try out what you write by giving out parts in class. You may also need to discuss how when you write dialogue in fiction, how these conversations have 'turning points' while at the same time discuss how it's good idea to disguise these turning points. Then again, how do you build tension into dialogue? And how do you build or break 'status'. Who is talking 'up', who is talking 'down' and does this change, if so how? 

If ever you wonder why children's stories can often be very good in terms of plot and description but not very good on dialogue, that's because in the history of English teaching in primary schools, hardly anyone has ever thought that this is important, necessary, interesting or relevant. And yet, when we read a novel to children, we all know when the dialogue is good and when it's not so good. 

So let's draw some strands together here: we can break language up into different parts and functions. These are not fixed for all time. We can break it down in ways that are different from the ones that we're given. These systems may or may not help us become good users of language. It's possible that some systems work better than others. To use language well, we need plenty of 'immersion' in the forms or genres we are learning eg writing fiction.  Use of language is very diverse. For reasons not always clear, some very important, high prestige uses of language are not taught. Throughout, we should remember that 'how break things down' may not always be the best way to 'build things up'. 

Open letter from Jewish academics at Goldsmiths in response to the Report of the Independent Inquiry on Antisemitism

15 July 2025

We are an informal group of Jewish staff members at Goldsmiths, University of London. We welcome the Report’s careful and crucial distinction between antisemitism and criticism of Israel, its affirmation of freedom of speech and its conclusion that a working complaints process that listens to victims of antisemitism is urgently needed. We would, however, urge the utmost caution against using the findings of the Report to constrain any legitimate protests – for example in relation to showing support for Palestinians – on campus.

The independent inquiry concluded that the College was ‘culpable’ in failing to prevent antisemitic incidents on campus and referred to a ‘lack of trust amongst Jewish staff and students in the College’s ability to handle complaints of antisemitism’.

In the light of these findings, we also wish to express very serious concern at the failure of the College’s senior management team to engage with Jewish colleagues, either before or after the report’s publication. On the day the report was published the College appointed pro-vice Chancellor Professor Adam Dinham to lead a two-year antisemitism action plan. We have made numerous requests to meet him as soon as possible so that we can have early input. We have been repeatedly rebuffed.

As far as we know, neither Jewish staff nor students were involved in the decision to set up the independent inquiry two years ago. As part of the College’s proposed action plan, an advisory panel is being proposed. Yet, we have no idea of its composition.

This points to a long-standing failure to act effectively and transparently not only over antisemitism (as identified by the Inquiry), but in relation to racism more generally. For example, the College has failed to deliver on its original commitment to set up anti-racism training, initially promised six years ago.

This also reflects a long-standing reluctance to engage or consult meaningfully with staff, especially over the kinds of action that need to be taken in relation to anti-racist training for management, staff and students. The same lack of care is apparent in public statements made by the vice-chancellor Frances Corner, who has made the unsubstantiated claim that Jewish academics have left Goldsmiths due to antisemitism (the report gives no such indication). Our concerns on this matter have likewise been brushed off.

This is an unacceptable and absurd situation, where a sizeable number of concerned Jewish staff are being sidelined on the issue of antisemitism. We are now once again requesting that senior management meet with us as soon as possible to discuss these urgent matters.

Catherine Rottenberg
Ruth Garland
Michael Guggenheim
Michael Rosen
Des Freedman
Ben Levitas
Laura Belinky
Clare Finburgh Delijani

Julia Sauma

A brand new document on writing in primary schools, and they didn't ask writers to help them! Lols

 This is how the new government Writing Framework ends:

Acknowledgements This guidance would not have been possible without the support and input of many people. 11 We would particularly like to thank our sector panel, who voluntarily offered their time and knowledge, led by Dr. Tim Mills, MBE, Executive Director of Primary, STEP Academy Trust, with support from Dame Ruth Miskin, Founder of Read Write Inc.; Andrew Percival, Deputy Headteacher, Stanley Road Primary School; Ms. Clare Sealy, OBE, Head of Education Improvement, Education Office, States of Guernsey; Joanne Siddall, former Strategic Lead, Burley Woodhead English Hub; Sonia Thompson, Headteacher/Director, St. Matthew's C.E. Primary Research and Support School; Alex Quigley, Head of Content and Engagement, Education Endowment Foundation; and with input from Ofsted. We would also like to thank the wider group of academics and education professionals who took the time to talk to us or review the draft: Dr Elaine Allen, OBE, Blackpool Literacy Lead; Naomi Ashman, Director of Learning Success, The Bluecoat School, Birmingham; Dr Francesca Bonafede, Research and Evaluation Manager, Writing for Pleasure, National Literacy Trust; Dr Ellen Bristow, National Literacy Trust; Daisy Christodoulou, Director of Education, No More Marking; Jane Considine, Education Consultant, Jane Considine Education; Ian Considine, Education Consultant, Jane Considine Education; Janey Cooksley, Headteacher of Briar Hill Primary School and Regional Director, David Ross Education Trust; Teresa Cremin, Professor of Education (Literacy), The Open University; Catharine Driver - Secondary School Adviser, School Improvement; Andrew Ettinger, Director of Education, National Literacy Trust; Pie Corbett, Talk for Writing; Felicity Ferguson, The Writing For Pleasure Centre; Chris Fountain, English Subject Lead, Oak National Academy; Simon Rose, DCEO, David Ross Education Trust; Sarah Green, Trust Director of Literacy at Prospere Learning Trust and independent consultant, The Literacy Coach; Martin Galway, Head of Professional Learning and Partnerships, National Literacy Trust; Amy Gaunt, Director of Learning, Impact and Influence, Voice 21; Steve Graham, Regents and Warner Professor, Arizona State University; Dr Julian Grenier, Education Endowment Foundation; Jean Gross CBE, Independent Consultant; Judith C. Hochman, Ed. D. Founder, The Writing Revolution; Christine Jackson, Australian Education Research Organisation; Emma Jones, SENCO and SEND Consultant; Debra Myhill, Professor Emerita in Language and Literacy Education, University of Exeter; Tim Oates CBE, Fellow, Churchill College Cambridge; Dr Sally Payne, Professional Adviser, Royal College of Occupational Therapists; Louisa Reeves, Director of Policy and Evidence, Speech and Language UK; Madeleine Roberts, Network Lead for Primary English, Ark Schools; Christopher Robertson, Independent Academic, Policy Analyst and Adviser to Educational Organisations, Co-ordinator for the SENCo-Forum (national e-community), Visiting Professor (inclusion, special educational needs and disability, University of Derby); Joan Sedita, Founder, Keys to Literacy; Sarah Scott, Head of Literacy, Ambition Institute; Dr Daniel Stavrou, Assistant Director, Council for Disabled Children; Julia Strong, on behalf of Talk for Writing; Sue Smits, Director, Morrells Handwriting; Mark Stewart, Director, Left n Write; Nisha Tank, Head of School Improvement, National Literacy Trust; Natalie Wexler, Education Writer and Co-author of The Writing Revolution; Shareen Wilkinson, Executive Director of Education, LEO Academy Trust; Liz Williams - Project Manager, School Improvement and Ross Young, Literacy Lab, University of Edinburgh, The Writing For Pleasure Centre. 12 Special thanks also go to all the English Hubs and the English Hubs Council, who have contributed to the development of the document. We are most grateful for the thoughtful suggestions and steers we have received. There was a lot of agreement about the main messages and the final document brings together the thinking on those; there was less consensus in some other areas. We have listened to the advice, taken account of evidence and carefully considered the approach we should take, but we recognise that not everyone will agree with all our decisions. We have also been sent much useful material. We have read and considered this and, in some cases, have included it in the document. The amount of detail and explanation in the framework has to be balanced against its length, and we have not been able to include every contribution. We appreciate the input to and enthusiasm for the project from reviewers and hope that we may be able to draw again on their expertise when this is updated.

I have looked through this list but so far I haven't been able to find a single person on the list who I would describe as 'a writer'. I've no doubt that they all write. I suspect - but don't know - that they can all write reports and documents, which is one (and only one) kind of writing. Indeed, the whole document leans heavily on this one kind of writing: standard English continuous prose. 

Both in the history of writing and in the contemporary spread of writing, you'll find that standard English continuous prose is only one small part of writing. As I've pointed out in a previous blog, this report ignores the other two pillars of what traditionally were regarded as part of 'English' - namely plays and poems. In fact, this document not only ignores them, it also doesn't explain why it ignores them. (Yes, if you 'search' 'poetry', 'poems', 'drama' etc you'll find one or two passing mentions. What I mean is that there is no consideration of them as 'writing'.)

I suggest that there are several reasons for this and one of them is on account of the composition of these panels.  These are predominantly people who 'know about' writing (allegedly) but don't actually do creative writing in any kind of published and successful way. They are not practitioners. In other words, they exemplify the Gove model of education: 'knowledge before competence'. 

So let's ask, why might it be important for a brand new document on Writing in primary schools to include the thoughts of writers for children - or indeed writers for anybody? Because we know about writing. We know what it takes to write stories, plays and poems. We know what it's like to look for ideas, to find ideas, to get stuck, to edit, to change what we write. 

But more than that: many writers for children spend many, many hours doing writing workshops with children. These are usually not constrained and contained by the absurd, box-ticking, unnecessary knowledge-first nonsense that the Gove revolution has loaded 'writing' with. We go in with ideas, feelings, thoughts and actual examples of how and why we wrote something that interests the children. We go in with shapes, forms, plots, inventions, and stories of our own creativity. We think in terms of sparks and enthusiasms. Many of us won't 'mark' the children's work and give it grades. Our criteria on how to improve a piece of writing are often completely different from the nonsense that stems from the Gove revolution. Our idea of what makes a good piece of writing may well be very different from the nonsense to do with expanded noun phrases, subordinate clauses, fronted adverbials, embedded relative clauses. We talk about images, tension, motives, patterns, empathy, irony, mood, problems and much more of that sort of thing. 

So of course they didn't ask any of us to provide input into this deadly dull, tedious document! (Just to be clear, if they had asked me, I would have refused. I can explain why at another time.) 

So you have a document that doesn't understand what writing is, doesn't what it is to write successfully. 

Meanwhile, you may have noticed that there is what feels like a new emphasis on handwriting. (I'm agnostic about this.) On the panel, you'll see the name of Ruth Miskin. Quite coincidentally, a few days after the report appeared, Ruth Miskin put on sale a brand new handwriting package. Very handy. 

How do you become 'fluent' at reading? Ruth Miskin knows.

Maybe I'm slow off the mark here but I was alerted this week to a programme that is on sale now that will teach children 'reading fluency'. I'll come to what it is in a moment, but first a few words about where we've got to with 'learning to read'.

In 2011, I was present at the launch in the House of Commons of the Reading Association's Summer Reading Challenge, a nationwide effort to get children going to libraries and reading books. Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister at the time gave a speech. He hardly mentioned the Reading Challenge at all. He used the occasion to launch his government's policy on phonics, which would involve compulsory phonics sessions in every maintained school in England with a phonics screening test at the end of Year One. Nick Gibb said that this would 'eradicate illiteracy'. 

At the time, I thought that that was a bold claim. All sorts of efforts over the last 100 years or so in many different countries have been tried out to 'eradicate' illiteracy and to date all that had been found was that there were competing ways to 'improve' literacy. 

Digression: I was taught to read using a scheme called 'Beacon Readers'. In the teachers' guide to the scheme, the writers pointed out that it would be a great mistake to teach reading in a way that either only worked on what they called 'phonetics' (what we would now call 'phonics') or solely on 'meaning'. The scheme, they claimed, would combine both. And indeed it did. Stories, words lists using repeated phonemes all linked together. 

When Nick Gibb's phonic revolution came in, one way they did it was to claim that the obstacle facing children was 'Look and Say', a method which supposedly or actually tried to teach reading by teaching 'whole words'. What surprised me at the time was that I was of a generation that wasn't taught to read that way and yet I didn't ever hear the argument against the Beacon Readers method. 

So, phonics came in and here we are 14 or so years later, and simple question: has illiteracy been eradicated? If not, why not? If so, what are the problems that remain? 

I can't answer those questions directly but I'm picking up a few hints. Firstly, is the one concerning the Key Stage 2 scores. I've heard experts talking about how they're worried that these scores seem 'difficult to budge'. Really? Surely after all this phonics, then we should have seen huge leaps in the KS2 scores. This would be or should be the proof in the pudding. Teach phonics: push up reading scores for 11 year olds. No?

Well there's one theoretical problem here: phonics is a way of teaching the alphabetic code as an abstract skill - it matches phonemes and graphemes. It's supposed to be detached and detachable from reading-for-meaning. A good phonics performer, it's claimed, can see most words for the first time and read them or at least have a good shot at them. On the other hand, the KS2 reading test asks the children to answer questions related to the meaning. (I have strong criticisms of this but I'll leave that to one side.) The key word here is 'meaning'. 

Those of us who were critical of the phonics revolution kept using this word 'meaning'. We were (and still are) concerned that children were spending a lot of time looking at texts (reading schemes) and not relating their knowledge of the alphabetic code to meaning. As a result, the actual process of what we all commonly understand reading to be (ie reading for meaning) was, and is, taking a back seat. 

When we raised this, we've been pushed away and told that we're doubters and people who are trying to prevent children from progressing. Hmmm. The lack of 'progress' accusation seems to be the one that can be directed at this failure of the system to get the Key Stage 2 scores to budge.

Oh no, say the defenders of phonics, look out our PISA scores! What these show is that England has risen in the international table. Hooray! But they only show a tiny improvement on scores. How can that be? Well, anyone who follows football knows precisely how. You can win the league one year with,  say 85 points, but the next year you can get 85 points and come second. There is not a direct correlation between raw scores and places in a league. This elementary fact seemed to escape the notice of the commentators and, stand by for when or if this government introduces some changes to reading policies and the newspapers will again mis-read the meaning of the PISA tables. That's because they will have been briefed by people who defend the phonics revolution.

But now we have another very big hint that all might not be well with phonics revolution and 'phonics-will-eradicate-illiteracy' line. The remarkable Ruth Miskin who devised a phonics programme (as well as advised the government on phonics - surely a coincidence), has developed a reading fluency programme. 

What schools should do is buy the programme and buy the training. Of course. As a writer for children, I will immediately declare an interest here:  money from school budgets to buy Ruth Miskin's phonics programme and money from school budgets to buy Ruth Miskin's reading fluency programme is less money to buy books for children. I reveal this fact to anticipate the argument that I am only talking about this stuff because it affects my pocket. 

Nevertheless, I will take the view that Ruth Miskin herself has clocked that even her fail-safe phonics scheme may not enable children to read fluently. So, simple question again, why not?

What possible obstacle to reading fluently can there be if nearly all children are passing their phonics screening check? 

I have some recent experience of this with myself. I have done some Yiddish classes. Yiddish can be written with the same letters I'm using here (so-called 'Roman alphabet') but traditionally it's written with Hebrew letters. I have done phonics with these in order to learn them. What do you think my difficulty has been? Reading fluently! So, though I could say out loud each letter, I found recognising words and getting the 'flow' quite difficult. I think I know why. I didn't do any writing so I didn't get to express myself in writing in Yiddish (though I can say quite a lot of elementary things and colloquial stuff that my parents said.) And also I didn't immerse myself in enough simple texts to be able to become fluent. Further, in a way that is similar to English, there are exceptions to the regular forms. Unless these are artificially excluded from texts, they pose problems if you want to be fluent. 

So, excuse me for using my own experience but I can see some analogies here with the problem that I suspect even Ruth Miskin has spotted. Real texts and real reading of real texts are more complicated then saying out loud simplified texts devised in order to teach phonics.

So will Ruth Miskin's second batch of materials do the trick? I will say, in spite of my declared interest, what's the matter with real books? If the aim is to get children reading and understanding real books, why not give them real books? Why create yet another level before you get to read real books ? Anyway, there'll be fewer real books available because all the money has gone on phonics materials and fluency materials!

I am expecting there will be a third tier of materials soon. Why not the Ruth Miskin anthologies so that children won't need to read real books, instead they follow programmed reading all the way through primary schools? There really isn't any need for children to read real books at all, is there?  

Here's Ruth Miskin's fluency programme. Buy, buy, buy. 

(The title  'Beyond Phonics' is a bit of a giveway, innit? 'Beyond'? But I was told that phonics could do it all. Native speakers, people told me, would do phonics and then be able to read. I've seen TV programmes on it. But now we need 'Beyond Phonics'. Buy, buy, buy.)

https://www.ruthmiskin.com/comprehension/

Gaza: this is the word

Gaza
I'm sorry.
This.
This is the word.
This is the word that can't say.
This is the word that can't say what needs to be said.
This is the word that can't say what needs to be said about things that are being done.
This is the word that can't say what needs to be said about things that are being done to people.
This is the word that can't say what needs to be said about things that are being done.
This is the word that can't say what needs to be said.
This is the word that can't say.
This is the word.
This.
I'm sorry
Gaza.

Bulldozers just been shipped to Israel from US. Here's a poem about bulldozers.

 July 9 2025, headline in Times of Israel

IDF receives bulldozer shipment from US that was reportedly held up by Biden administration

One day...

...people made

the bulldozer:

a great power that could be put to many uses,

the bulldozer could move earth

so that there could be roads

and railways

and we would rush along

moving between villages, towns and cities

sharing what we make and know.

River banks and sea walls could be built

with a bulldozer

so that the floods wouldn’t come

and overwhelm us.

The earth could be flattened

by a bulldozer

so that we could have houses

and flats to live in.

And it was good.

And then one day

people 

saw that the great bulldozer 

could flatten the houses and flats

that men, women and children live in,

these the men, women and children

who the people didn’t like

men, women and children 

who the people didn’t want to be there

and these men, women and children 

would have to move, go, 

transfer to somewhere else.

And it was said

that if ever there were men, women and children

who got in the way of the bulldozer

they could be flattened.

Yes

people made the bulldozer.

The great bulldozer

a powerful invention that 

can be put to many uses.

I give you:

the bulldozer.