St John's English Podcast

NJJ takes a feminist lens to the reading of Twelfth night. And bursts into song.

Our wonderful and inaugural Pupil Poet Laureate, Claudia Hollington, reads her poem entitled 'Childhood', the text of which is below:

Childhood

Marvelling at the many silvery trails

Traced on the leaf-lined bottles and pails

That we collected and built with care

for a clientele of snails.

A summer uniform striped in white and blue,

The smell of sunscreen in hazy air

And the soft song as the pigeons coo.

Feet tingling, feeling dizzy

Sat high on wooden beams

That we scaled in the playground

When the teachers couldn’t see.

A cross country run through frosty woods

Ducking branches and jumping roots

Lungs burning from the winter air,

Mud caked on all our boots.

Monsters meet Marxism in NJJ's latest slice of political criticism of a Gothic classic

NJJ interrogates Carol Ann Duffy's 'Mrs Sisyphus' from a Marxist perspective. Roll up, roll up!

What does a political reading of Carol Ann Duffy's Mrs Midas offer us? Pure gold!

NJJ turns his political lens to Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber. Bloody brilliant!

NJJ's crash course on instant AO5 takes a look at the politics of comedy in Twelfth Night.

NJJ's crash course on political readings of texts considers the poetry, and politics, of Christina Rossetti.

NJJ's crash course on political readings kicks off with a Marxist take on Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. Seriously.

Using the opening seven stanzas of Coleridge's poem as a starter (and continuing his rhyme scheme and meter), some bright and brilliant Year 6 pupils continue Cristabel's journey as she peers around the oak...