A book by poet and teacher Kate Clanchy has been included on the longlist of 12 for the Orwell prize for political writing. Clanchy’s book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me (Picador) is about some of the children she has taught in her 33-year career, and is also about “education and how it is inexorably dominated by class. Yet this is the very opposite of a worthy lecture: Clanchy's reflections on teaching and the stories of her students are moving, funny, full of love and offer sparkling insights into modern British society."

Kate Clanchy’s poetry collection Slattern won a Forward prize. Her BBC 3 radio programme about her work with students was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes prize. In 2018 she was awarded an MBE for services to literature, and an anthology of her students’ work at Oxford Spires Academy, a small comprehensive school with 30 languages, and a particular focus on poetry, England: Poems from a School, was published to great acclaim.

Background: Poet gets a gong: an MBE for Kate Clanchy

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