‘Oh, How I Would Change the Curriculum’: Venturing beyond the GCSE Poetry Anthology

ABSTRACT This essay explores the creativity and learning that can take place when students are given the opportunity to go beyond the GCSE set poems and create their own poetry anthologies. I argue that in the process of creating a poetry anthology, students are encouraged to engage on a deeper and more personal level with poetry. I suggest that when students are given the time, space, and autonomy to create their own anthologies, they not only develop the critical and creative writing skills required for their examinations, but are also more readily able to explore and express their lived experiences. I consider how such a project invites students to develop their writing and shape their identities through drawing on experiences, views and attitudes often overlooked in an increasingly exam-pressurised classroom. I closely examine two students’ anthologies, arguing for the need to affirm and advance students’ writing through a co-operative creativity.