Poetry by Heart has been described as a hugely enjoyable and an effective solution to the so-called ‘problem of poetry’, bringing improvement in the quality of poetry provision in schools, greater understanding of poetry in participants and a rise in pupil confidence.
Thousands of schools have taken part, and more than 110,000 young people were encouraged to learn a poem by heart in 2024.
“I am proud to serve children, young people and teachers in this way, and I am proud that we are making a difference to the popular enjoyment of poetry on a mass scale,” said Julie.
Poetry was instrumental in helping Julie get to grips with her own education and find her way as an English student at the University of Hull. An initial difficult start to student life was overcome by encouraging words from a tutor and a realisation that poetry was a good place to focus her efforts.
“I had nowhere near as much experience of English literature as my peers and rather floundered in the first few terms. But my tutor was encouraging and I eventually worked out that my best tactic was to focus on poetry, an area not many students seemed interested in. From then on, I chose poets to write essays about where I could, I worked incredibly hard in my second year and things started to go better.”
After completing her studies, Julie pursued a career in Education, but when her work found her moving away from English, her innovative spirit came to the forefront and she took an entrepreneurial approach to English teaching.
“I taught English Language and Literature for about thirteen years, became a faculty leader and then worked in HE Widening Participation for a while. When my roles started drifting away from the English subject specialism I’d enjoyed, I teamed up with a colleague and set up a small independent business, The Full English, to generate creative educational projects and consultancy to re-resource English teaching for the digital age. We have worked on wonderful projects, including for the British Library, BT Learning, and The Poetry Archive.”
It was whilst working on this latter project at the Poetry Archive that a conversation with former Poet Laureate, and former University of Hull lecturer Sir Andrew Motion that the idea for Poetry by Heart began to take shape.