KATE CLANCHY

Literary Giant seeks young man to push bathchair. Own room in Hampstead, all found, exciting cultural milieu. Modest wage. Ideal 'gap year' opportunity. Apply Prys Box 4224XXC. 'It's only England,' said Mr Fox, 'just a few hours on the train. You can always come home.' 'Ah've never been though,' said Struan, 'never been South.' 'Then you should,' said Mr Fox, 'you really should.' So it is that Struan Robertson, orphan, genius, and just seventeen, leaves his dour native town of Cuik, and arrives in London in the freakish fine summer of 1989. His job, he finds, is to care for Phillip, dumbfounded and paralysed by a massive stroke, because, though two teenage children, two wives, and a literary agent all rattle round Phillip's large house, they are each too busy with their peculiar obsessions to do it themselves. As the city bakes, Struan finds himself tangled in a midsummer's dream of mistaken identity, giddying property prices, wild swimming, and overwhelming passions. For everyone, it is to be a life-changing summer. This is a bright book about dark subjects: a tale about kindness and its limits, told with love. Spiked with witty dialogue, and jostling with gleeful, zesty characters, it is a glorious debut novel from an acclaimed writer of poetry, non-fiction, and short stories.

Here are poems about love, loss, mothers, fathers, God, rain and growing up. About all the things that poems are always about, in fact, with one crucial difference. Instead of being remembered from an adult distance, these poems were written by a diverse group of teenagers direct from their own experience. So as well as being clever, funny and moving, they are also immediate - they go straight to the heart like a text from a friend.Most of these poems are by pupils from a single multicultural comprehensive school, Oxford Spires Academy. Many have already been social media sensations: Linnet Drury's poems, for instance, have been retweeted over 100,000 times.

An unforgettable collection of poems by young people, edited by the award-winning writer and teacher Kate Clanchy.I text you how much it hurts not to see you.Here are poems about love, loss, mothers, fathers, God, rain, and growing up. About all the things that poems always are about, in fact, with one crucial difference. Instead of being remembered from an adult distance, these poems were written by a diverse group of teenagers direct from their own experience. So as well as being clever, funny and moving they are also immediate they go straight to the heart like a text from a friend.Most of these poems are by pupils from a single multicultural comprehensive school, Oxford Spires Academy. Many have already been social media sensations: Linnet Drurys poems, for instance, have been retweeted over 100,000 times. All the poets have been paid for their poems, and a donation of 50p from the sale of this book will be made to the charity First Story to help further creative writing in schools.Friend: Poems by Young People has been edited by the award-winning poet, writer and teacher Kate Clanchy. A previous anthology of her students work, England: Poems from a School, was published to great acclaim in 2018.

Kate Clanchy wants to change the world and thinks school is an excellent place to do it. She invites you to meet some of the kids she has taught in her thirty-year career.Join her as she explains everything about sex to a classroom of thirteen-year-olds. As she works in the school Inclusion Unit, trying to improve the fortunes of kids excluded from regular lessons because of their terrifying power to end learning in an instant. Or as she nurtures her multicultural poetry group, full of migrants and refugees, watches them find their voice and produce work of heartbreaking brilliance.While Clanchy doesnt deny stinging humiliations or hide painful accidents, she celebrates this most creative, passionate and practically useful of jobs. Teaching today is all too often demeaned, diminished and drastically under-resourced. Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me will show you why it shouldnt be.

I text you how muchit hurts not to see you.Here are poems about love, loss, mothers, fathers, God, rain and growing up. About all the things that poems are always about, in fact, with one crucial difference. Instead of being remembered from an adult distance, these poems were written by a diverse group of teenagers direct from their own experience. So as well as being clever, funny and moving, they are also immediate they go straight to the heart like a text from a friend.Most of these poems are by pupils from a single multicultural comprehensive school, Oxford Spires Academy. Many have already been social media sensations: some students poems, for instance, have been retweeted over 100,000 times.A donation from the sale of this book will be made to the charity Asylum Welcome.

Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel AwardThe English of this novel are a particular kind of family. Their ailing patriarch is Phillip Prys, the once-famous writer unexpectedly eclipsed first by voguish Salman Rushdie, and second by a massive stroke. His third wife, Shirin, pads through their house in Hampstead, resolute in the face of Myfanwy, first spouse, who returns with all the subtlety of a stormy weather front to manage Phillips care. Their children, Jake and Juliet, have each retreated towards drugs and food, their already strained relationship with their father unable to bear this latest rupture. And to cap it all, its the hottest summer anyone can remember.Enter Struan. Built like a heron, fresh from Scotland, he is thrust -- quite literally -- into the bosom of the family as Phillips 17-year-old nurse. Hes had experience of death, but not of London. Its a foreign country, with foreign food and foreign customs. But it also has a kind of magic. As he comes under the influence of each Prys, his life begins to change in ways he could never have imagined. And so, in the meantime, do theirs. . .

With a new afterword.The best book on teachers and children and writing that Ive ever read. No-one has said better so much of what so badly needs saying - Philip PullmanKate Clanchy wants to change the world and thinks school is an excellent place to do it. She invites you to meet some of the kids she has taught in her thirty-year career.Join her as she explains everything about sex to a classroom of thirteen-year-olds. As she works in the school Inclusion Unit, trying to improve the fortunes of kids excluded from regular lessons because of their terrifying power to end learning in an instant. Or as she nurtures her multicultural poetry group, full of migrants and refugees, watches them find their voice and produce work of heartbreaking brilliance.While Clanchy doesnt deny stinging humiliations or hide painful accidents, she celebrates this most creative, passionate and practically useful of jobs. Teaching today is all too often demeaned, diminished and drastically under-resourced. Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me will show you why it shouldnt be.Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2020

Literary hand grenades, raising difficult questions about the world in which we live - GuardianIn the sixteen stories of The Not-Dead and The Saved, Kate Clanchy turns her clear gaze and remarkable honesty on what it means to be a mother or a child; to struggle alone; to seek comfort in love; to be present; to be sane.Lithe prose and crackling wit carry us from comedy to tragedy and back again, and create a bold cast of characters that includes even a few delightfully famous names.The much-lauded title story won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2009, and the collection as a whole more than delivers on that promise. It celebrates Kate Clanchys gift for clarity, empathy and surprise, and confirms her as one of the finest writers of our time.

An absolutely wonderful book - Deborah MoggachIn a London street at the turn of the twenty-first century, two neighbours start to chat over the heads of their children.Kate Clanchy is a writer, privileged and sheltered. Antigona is a refugee from Kosovo. On instinct, Kate offers Antigona a job as a nanny, and Antigona accepts. Over the next five years and a thousand cups of coffee Antigonas extraordinary story slowly emerges. She has escaped from a war, she has divorced a violent husband, but can she escape the harsh code she was brought up with?At the kitchen table where anything can be said, the women discover they have everything, as well as nothing, in common.

Do you want to write a poem? This book will show you how to grow your own poemKate Clanchy has been teaching people to write poetry for more than twenty years. Some were old, some were young; some were fluent English speakers, some were not. None of them were confident to start with, but a surprising number went to win prizes and every one finished up with a poem they were proud of, a poem that only they could have written their own poem.Kates big secret is a simple one: to share other poems. She believes poetry is like singing or dancing and the best way to learn is to follow someone else. In this book, Kate shares the poems she has found provoke the richest responses, the exercises that help to shape those responses into new poems, and the advice that most often helps new writers build their own writing practice.If you have never written a poem before, this book will get you started. If you have written poems before, this book will help you to write more fluently and confidently, more as yourself. This book not like other creative writing books. It doesnt ask you to set out on your own, but to join in. Your invitation is inside.