20. Poetry Sets You Free

... being a tribute to a great English teacher, who I gave a harder time to than he deserved - and who dealt with it admirably.

You remember a good teacher all your life. True, but of course you remember a terrible teacher all your life as well, its only the nondescript, mediocre teachers who you forget. But that is beside the point. John Shearring, who taught me English literature at Sir Henry Cooper Senior High School in Hull in the latter half of the 1970s was an excellent teacher. In fact it is no exaggeration to say that, if it wasn’t for him, none of the writing on this Substack page would ever have happened.

I don’t think that I am being unduly boastful when I say that I was a brighter than average child. I understood most of the things that were taught in the lessons that I attended and was more than able to complete any of the work which I was set, to a good standard. But that didn’t mean that I was a good student. As Mr Shearring would point out in the report sent to my parents every year “ The sooner that Michael realises that his role as class clown is not necessary or productive, the better”.

He was probably more forthright about my behaviour whilst chatting with his colleagues in the staff room. To put it bluntly, I was a little twat.

Early on in our relationship he had had to speak to me about the fact that I had changed the subject line on the exercise book in which I was given to fill with essays about Short Stories of Our Time to Shit Stories of Our Time. He dealt with it calmly and patiently, ignoring my excuses of a faulty biro and telling me in a weary voice to ‘just sort it out.” I respected that approach. If he had raved and shouted, I would have found it hilarious and plotted more elaborate larks against him.

He seemed to know exactly how to take the wind out of my sails with the least fuss and bother. And coupled to that approach, he seemed to take a genuine interest in the things that I liked. He ran a record club on a dinnertime and would encourage pupils to bring their favourite discs in to share. He brought in some of his own records, and even showed us an old wind up 78 rpm record player with a great thick needle and a horn attached to it. Not his of course, He couldn’t have been much more than a decade older than us. He was in touch enough to be keen to hear the Sex Pistols and Stranglers tracks that I turned up with. He even took me and another lad on a round trip of almost 300 miles to Newcastle one evening after school to see David Bowie play live at the City Hall.

Shamefully, all this had little effect on my behaviour. The best that can be said is that it didn’t get any worse. I thought that I knew it all, and would rather fool around or make what I thought were humorous comments to make my friends laugh than contribute properly to any serious discussion of Measure for Measure or Morte d’Arthur. The fact that he had stuck with me, and encouraged me to progress from Short Stories of Our Time to Morte D’Arthur is in itself a tribute to his ability and kindness.

Quite often, his favourite tactic for dealing with me was to throw me out of the lesson the moment that I arrived. He didn’t do it every time. I guess that he must have made some very quick judgement on what mood I was in that day and the potential of my causing disruption. On one occasion I remember protesting to him that I hadn’t actually done anything before he showed me the door. In fact I was still walking into the classroom. I must have smirked, or had some expression on my face which he could see boded trouble.

He used to send me to do work in the library. Sometimes it was an exercise allied to the text in question that the rest of the class would be working on with him - How did marriage change the lives of the three sisters in Mansfield Park? Sometimes it was just to read a few chapters of a book or paraphrase a few stanzas of poetry. He knew that, alone in the library, deprived of an audience, I would complete the job. He knew that deep down I loved literature, probably because he had put a lot of effort into developing that love.

John Shearring, always Mr Shearring to me, will be in his seventies these days. I haven’t bumped into him for years, but then I left Hull over two decades ago. I did see online that at some point he had been the head of a private school run by a religious group just outside of the city. In the article he was patiently explaining to the press that he wasn’t working for a cult, doubtlessly employing the same weary but polite tone that he used to use with me.

The events in the poem below never actually happened. I wasn’t that much of a smart arse. But it does have something of the flavour of the relationship between me and Mr Shearring in it. He was a good man, and a great teacher.

For the second week running I have to end this piece by expressing the hope that its subject somehow comes across it. And that he might be moved to get in touch - maybe even contribute a poem or something for old times sake.

I’ll let him put me in my place with the last word - from November 1977

Poetry Sets you Free

He's the corduroy suited and bearded kind
Who wants to employ his phenomenal mind
For the benefit of all of humanity
But right now, it's exclusively focused on me
Poetry sets you free

Detention! Report to me straight after dinner
It pains me do it, but you are a sinner
You fooled around throughout my lit'rature lesson
It's my duty to make you regret your transgression
Poetry sets you free

I'll let you go when you've done me one task
Don't worry lad, it's not too much to ask
There's other teachers who would treat you much worse
All I demand is six stanzas of verse
Poetry sets you free

Six stanzas of verse, each of four lines or more
Once it is done you can walk out the door
You choose the subject, the rhyme scheme, and so
Place it on my desk, and off you can go
Poetry sets you free

I can hear all my classmates at play in the yard
But I focus my mind, I concentrate hard
And after what seems like a very long time
I hit on a subject and think out a rhyme 
Poetry sets you free

So, here’s the six stanzas that you wanted, Sir
And now that you have them, you have to play fair
Let me go out and have fun with my friends
There's still a while yet before dinnertime ends
Poetry sets you free