‘Poetry does really educate’ : an interview with spoken word poet Luka Lesson

Abstract

Spoken word poetry is a means of engaging young people with a genre that has often been much maligned in classrooms all over the world. This interview with the Australian spoken word poet Luka Lesson explores issues that are of pressing concern to poetry education. These include the idea that engagement with poetry in schools can be enhanced by putting spoken word poetry on the curriculum, the suggestion to provide teachers with professional development opportunities in order to equip them with the confidence to create poetry, and the need to surmount some of the societal, institutional and pedagogical challenges that hinder the promotion of poetry in education.