Assoc for Scottish LiteratureFeb 14

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love…

—Carol Ann Duffy, “Valentine”
published in A Red Rose or a Satin Heart: An Anthology of Scottish Love Poems, @canongatebooks 2010
💝

#Scottish #literature #ValentinesDay #poem #poetry #womenwriters #lovepoem #CarolAnnDuffy

Show threadAssoc for Scottish Literature

An Onion Walks Into a Classroom…

“I genuinely hadn’t anticipated just how volatile a bag of onions could be in a classroom with thirty teenagers”

—a cautionary tale from Alan Gillespie on the perils of teaching Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “Valentine”

https://www.litromagazine.com/literature/an-onion-walks-into-a-classroom/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #CarolAnnDuffy #Valentine #ValentinesDay #teaching #classroom

An Onion Walks Into A Classroom | Litro Magazine

I know in my heart that it was not Carol Ann Duffy’s fault. It was my own fault, and to a lesser extent the pupils I tried to teach on that fateful day. I know these things yet I still cringed when I saw Duffy at the Edinburgh International Book Festival a few months ago, and struggled to stifle a brief fantasy about strangling her with her own smock. As though that could be any kind of suitable revenge.

Litro Magazine
Feb 14 at 2:30pmWeb
Show threadBodhipaksaFeb 14
@scotlit That was brilliant, thanks!
Show threadAxomamma, Antifa from birthFeb 14
@bodhipaksa @scotlit Well, it was great up to the very end when we'rexleft hanging. What lesson does the author think he learned?
Show threadBodhipaksaFeb 14
@Axomamma @scotlit I'm assuming "Don't give teenagers onions to play with"?
Show threadAxomamma, Antifa from birthFeb 14
@bodhipaksa That's lame, as the kids would say.
Show threadAssoc for Scottish LiteratureFeb 14
@bodhipaksa @Axomamma I think the lesson – “Teenagers can create chaos out of anything, so don’t give them the opportunity” – is pretty much implicit …
Show threadBodhipaksaFeb 14
@scotlit @Axomamma That tracks with my experience of being at high school. We gave our Latin teacher a nervous breakdown. And in our school, only the "good" pupils were allowed to study Latin.