Answerlands by Joseph Minden
Carcanet Press
Published 27th November 2025.
This is a book about school and dream life. The spine of the collection is a series of journal-like poems, sometimes running headlong into one another, sometimes demarcated by a date, written according to a regime as part of my work as a classroom teacher. Each week, I would make whatever notes I could - at my desk early in the morning or in the evening; in my bed as I fell asleep; very occasionally in the classroom as students worked. Each Sunday, I would write them into a poem. I could add things that came to mind, but I couldn't use notes from other weeks. Each poem is determined, shaped, misshapen by the week it came from, by constraints on time, diminished energy, contingency. I began the process of writing them as a way to wrest work from the jaws of the timetable. Initially, the poems were very much centred on school; as time went on, their focus strayed further and further away. Dream images, fairy tale characters and the changing environment of Hollingbury iron age hill fort in Brighton (on the side of which I live) crept in. The title, Answerlands, is taken from a book by the forgotten educational theorist John Holt. It is a word he coined to describe the place children go in their minds when they are trying to satisfy their teacher by retrieving a correct answer without really thinking. To me, it resonated at a complete cross-current with that sense, evoking a kind of dreamland, a fairy tale world of quest and resolution. It holds both senses in balance - the curiosity-destroying, potential violence of school, and the dream-rhizome connecting the erring minds of teacher and student, which makes encounter possible.
This is a book about school and dream life. The spine of the collection is a series of journal-like poems, sometimes running headlong into one another, sometimes demarcated by a date, written according to a regime as part of my work as a classroom teacher. Each week, I would make whatever notes I could - at my desk early in the morning or in the evening; in my bed as I fell asleep; very occasionally in the classroom as students worked. Each Sunday, I would write them into a poem. I could add things that came to mind, but I couldn't use notes from other weeks. Each poem is determined, shaped, misshapen by the week it came from, by constraints on time, diminished energy, contingency. I began the process of writing them as a way to wrest work from the jaws of the timetable. Initially, the poems were very much centred on school; as time went on, their focus strayed further and further away. Dream images, fairy tale characters and the changing environment of Hollingbury iron age hill fort in Brighton (on the side of which I live) crept in. The title, Answerlands, is taken from a book by the forgotten educational theorist John Holt. It is a word he coined to describe the place children go in their minds when they are trying to satisfy their teacher by retrieving a correct answer without really thinking. To me, it resonated at a complete cross-current with that sense, evoking a kind of dreamland, a fairy tale world of quest and resolution. It holds both senses in balance - the curiosity-destroying, potential violence of school, and the dream-rhizome connecting the erring minds of teacher and student, which makes encounter possible.
MEMBERS ENJOY 25% OFF ALL POETRY BOOKS
Join the Poetry Book Society for 25% off all books
Join the Poetry Book Society for 25% off all books