He’s the man behind the foreword to our rather wonderful Results Day Survival Guide (go get your free copy now!), but perhaps more importantly he’s the person who wrote Why I Hate School But Love Education and I Will Not Let An Exam Result Decide My Fate. We caught up with the performance poet and dean of the University of Suli Breaks to ask him a few questions.
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You went to uni atSheffield, did you feel like it was a valuable experience? Definitely, it was a growth process for me. Being away from the environment I grew up around definitely allowed me to gain new perspective on a lot of things. However, I feel I benefited more from my extra-curricular activities rather than those in class.
Lots of readers can empathise with the idea that they love education but hate school - what do you think schools get wrong? I think the pressures on teachers to gain results, means that the focus on individuality of each student is often lost in this system.
You're very outspoken about education, which not a lot of poets are - why do you think that is? I am outspoken about every area in my life, my work is heavily influenced by personal experience. I spent a majority of my life in education and employment, causing this to become a focus of my subject matter.
How should young people reclaim power over their own education? I feel if they can gain understanding that education can exist outside the context of school, it will enable them to gain a further appreciation of how they can use it to benefit them. Both in and outside of school.
Many of our readers tell us how much they hate exams - and especially the pressure that's put on them - any tips on how to survive them, or ideas for alternatives? The key thing that helped me "survive" exams is rejecting the conventional approach of just memorising as much as possible. I focused more on understanding. I found that by gaining a better understanding of the subject I was studying, it become more interesting and facilitated the process of retaining the information.
Poetry is incredibly popular at the moment, what do you think is fuelling that success? I can’t definitively say, but I have noticed that the conscious level of society as a whole is raising. I think through the advent of social media, people have realised that they can find information, and more so learn for themselves. I think this in effect makes us more receptive to different ideas and mediums of conveying information, along with the conventional ones.
What's next for you and your career? I am currently just finishing my EP "The Dormroom" that is my priority at the moment. Our thanks to Suli for chatting and don't forget to go and check out his website and get a copy of The Dormroom, it's amazing!
