I think deep, deep is deeply ing for the people who are doing it. Once you beginyou have the whether they are tied to the mast. Thot those words have tied them to the mast and so therefore they have to keep justifying them. So it's got its own energy. And i think there's a particular thing with me that er, they knowi was made a symbol of everything that's wrong in british publishing. Am, because the book was successful, that these slips were seen as being everything that’s wrong inbritish publishing - but I don't think my book carries it. It's not a good candidate for that job. Its like nuclear
Freddie Sayers meets Kate Clanchy.
Kate Clanchy is a writer, teacher, and editor. She has been a qualified and practicing teacher since she was 22. Her writing includes three prize-winning collections of poetry, the Costa First Novel Prize-shortlisted Meeting the English, and the Orwell Prize-winning memoir Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me.
Last summer her work came under sustained criticism for its purportedly insensitive depictions of her students. Picador, her publisher until last week, did not come to her defence. Instead her students, who feature in her memoir, and in collections of their wiring like England Poem from A School, that Clanchy edited, supported her alone.
Last September, at least 20 of them wrote an open letter to The Bookseller defending her. They said their personal experiences of Clanchy were of “unequivocal care and support for us… as poets and as people”. They said they wanted to push back against suggestions that they “may be victims in some capacity.” They said Clanchy’s support gave them confidence as poets.
The furore around Clanchy made headlines across the UK last summer. She came to the UnHerd studio to discuss her experiences — of teaching, writing, and cancel culture — for the first time with Freddie Sayers.
For more read The Post from UnHerd.
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